7.6 The Reading Team

Shannon and Mary chat with Katherine Hamilton about maximizing the learning impact of co-teaching.     The conversation is centered around an article from Choice Literacy written by Franki Sibberson titled Aligning Curriculum with Struggling Readers in Mind.  The article proposes that co-teachers need to reflect and determine how their various teaching activities and strategies align into a cohesive instructional plan for the students, so that the readers can build transferable skills they can apply across the school-day.

RESOURCES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE:

1. Choice Literacy article by Franki Sibberson
2. Ensemble Learning
3. Thinking Maps
4. Six Approaches to CoTeaching
5. 6 Models of CoTeaching
6. Collaborative Team Teaching: Challenges and Rewards

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• Free Rubrics Guide created by us
• Finding Good Books Guide created by us
• Information about our Patreon membership

Transcript

7.6 The Reading Team with Katherine Hamilton 

Shannon Betts: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Reading Teachers Lounge, where you can learn on the go by eavesdropping on experienced reading teachers chatting about best practices that have helped their students grow. Mary and I, along with expert guests, share what we wish we'd studied in college, what we've discovered works with the students we teach, and what we're continuing to learn from the science of reading. 

Mary Saghafi: Learning to read is hard, and sometimes teaching a child how to read feels even more challenging. 

Shannon Betts: The Reading Teachers Lounge is here. 

Shannon Betts: Thanks for joining us in the Reading Teacher Lounge today. We are going to talk about a topic that we've wanted to talk about for a while. We're calling this episode the reading team and just talk about collaborating with other teachers. A lot of times we talk about struggling readers and working with [00:01:00] struggling readers because that's where Mary and I have had a lot of our practice over the years, and we brought on a guest, Katherine Hamilton, today to just sort of go over this topic with you guys and talk about the implications of students working with multiple teachers and multiple supports in the classroom and what that looks like from the student's perspective. 

I've kept an article in my professional files. Very close to my desk, actually, over the years. It was written by Franki Sibberson for Choice Literacy, and it talks about, the title of it is called Aligning Curriculum with Struggling Readers in Mind, and I'm just going to read a quote because I think this is a good summary of the article from her perspective. 

She said, Our next focus as a profession is to look at alignment as it impacts each child. How does each child's day of literacy scaffold learning to meet challenges that he or she encounters? We need this perspective, especially for the most struggling readers. The day makes sense to the adults in the school, but struggling students may be spending their time jumping [00:02:00] from one activity to another without understanding how it fits together with the rest of their learning. 

And so I think this is just a really important topic to talk about. Katherine especially is going to bring the perspective of working with English language learners, which as you know, I have a lot of experience with too. And I think it's just, you know, we do spend a lot of time as reading teachers talking about and thinking about aligning our curriculum, aligning it with the standards and the curriculum resources that we have. 

And we do, you know, we do You know, when we have time, it's not always built in, but when we have time, we do talk to our co teachers and all of our support staff when we can about how we're helping the students, but I think that this is a more purposeful kind of discussion that co teachers can have of making sure that we're giving students. 

flexible strategies and skills that the students can transfer to all of their learning, rather than thinking about, okay, this is the thing I do with my homeroom teacher. This is the thing I do with my ESL teacher. This is the thing I do with my special ed teacher. This is the thing I do with my reading [00:03:00] teacher. 

We want it to be just what they do for reading and writing. But I'll think, I think that some of that gets lost if you think about the day from the student's perspective. So that was a really long intro, but welcome to the Ring Teacher Slants, Katherine. And Tell us who you are and thank you for being here and tell us about your experience in literacy. 

Katherine Hamilton: Yeah, absolutely. So again, I'm Katherine Hamilton. I am our vice president of programs at Ensemble Learning. And Ensemble Learning is a non profit that I always say it's a luxury that we focus completely on equity for multilingual learners. And we say multilingual learners, which is really an umbrella term of, we like to say an asset based term that other states, many states use, English learners. 

English as a second language. So just know that when I say that I'm talking about, you know, all of our kiddos who are developing academic English proficiency and generally, you know, speaking another language at [00:04:00] home, including recent arrivals to the U. S. or students who were born in the U. S. but, you know, had their formative early years speaking another language. 

And I, I love this article so much because while it's not written in looking at multilingual learners, it's so applicable and something that we actually talk about a lot in our work and we're really Privilege. We get to work in both kind of traditional school settings where the instructions in English only, but we also work in a lot of dual language schools. 

And so they're really interesting piece there is you're not just developing literacy. You're developing by literacy. The goal is that students are Developing both that, you know, reading, writing, speaking, listening in academic English, but also in another language. Most commonly in the U. S. it's going to be Spanish, but we, you know, we see programs all over. 

And we really have to think about [00:05:00] the experience of students, the cognitive load on students And, and in our work, we're really privileged. We do get to work directly with teachers, be in the classroom, do instructional coaching, but we also have that the benefit of working with school leaders folks, you know, similar to your backgrounds kind of looking across the team and the whole experience for students. 

So we, we do get to work with instructional coaches and bring together leadership teams of the whole school, which we are, you know, really value that. Perspective of special education, literacy because that those pieces are all so important. Because we do have multilingual learners who fall in all kinds of kind of dual identified buckets as well. 

And so thinking about really the holistic experience that they have And this is something we really do talk about a lot. And one of the things that we do initially, just to kind of kick off as we think about this topic and the experience of a student throughout the [00:06:00] day, is we encourage a lot of our partner schools to do English learner shadowing. 

Where we actually encourage them to set aside some time. If they can set aside a whole day, it's awesome. But often we know for, for leaders, teachers, that's hard. But to actually follow a student throughout their day. This is especially impactful in secondary settings where a student is going to five or six different teachers, different content, and working on developing their literacy, their academic language proficiency. 

Like this article, like you all mentioned, like while, you know, Grappling with how does this teacher want me to do it? And what's the strategy I'm supposed to use here? But also just grappling with the relationships with the adults and the other students. And so we really find that practice to be extremely valuable. 

Often coupled with like empathy interviews. So sitting and really digging in with the student about the experience that they have. [00:07:00] To really understand, we can make some assumptions around what we see in the curriculum, what we see in the standards, but until we really dig in with a student it's really hard to know the impact that that's having and there's a lot of research around just the impact of code switching when a student may feel their culture and the dominant culture at a school don't quite match up, and then you layer on top of that the idea of, kind of an academic code switching of like, oh, when I read in math class, when I read a math word problem, I'm supposed to use this strategy. 

And then when I read a narrative text in my English ELA block, I'm supposed to use this strategy. And then I'm in social studies, you know, and it's just, As the article says, so much on the students. So I love that we're elevating this and thinking through it. And yeah, I would love to hear a little bit from what you all see the impact or what you see teachers doing to mitigate this. 

Cause we've seen a couple [00:08:00] cool things, but, but I'm, I'm curious, you know, what, what you're also seeing in the classrooms. 

Mary Saghafi: Yeah, I feel like my perspective on this has shifted a bit as my career path has shifted so I do a lot of advocacy work and I'm sitting in on IEP meetings with families and students and there's sometimes bigger differences than I'm really excited about in what's on paper and then what in actuality is happening in practice. 

And a lot of times you know, what I'm coaching parents, I will coach parents to say, ask the teacher to describe to you, you know, what does this one strategy look like? Or what does this accommodation look like? And I feel like. This is always, this has been a common practice, but a lot of times these, these meetings get rushed. 

And a lot of times it's the collaboration between the adults who are sharing that, oh, this strategy works really well. And then it triggers another thought with another adult who says, Oh, I did notice that that student is, [00:09:00] is doing that. In my class, and then another, you know, speech language pathologist will say, I'm so glad to hear that we've been practicing that and a lot of times those adults don't recognize that that's a targeted skill that they're practicing in another area. 

And so I do think that the IEP meeting in itself is the best time. To collaborate that way. But I don't think that there's always a built in time to talk about those specific strategies unless a parent really brings it up or unless a teacher really brings it up. And so if you have an opportunity to do that, especially when there's even more collaboration with multilingual students, I think, you know, having, if, if you, your district calls it the ESL teacher or however they, they classify this other language teacher, those supports could be really beneficial. 

So when I was working as the resource teacher, I would often partner with our, our other language teacher. I would also partner with the, the [00:10:00] speech and language pathologist because those strategies that they have are not always in my wheelhouse. But are oftentimes related and can be really helpful for all the students in my classroom because we're still building language. 

And I think what Shannon and I have chatted a little bit more about this season is that we see ourselves not so much as just classroom teachers, but English teachers and being an English teacher. requires a little more specificity about understanding what language development looks like, understanding what are these specific milestones that students need to get to from one grade to the next. 

And sometimes that may include, what is the syntax? How do, how are our students Working on completing more complex sentences. Are they able to switch from academic language to more social conversational language. And so I think all of this is related for all of our students and it's really necessary, building in a little bit of talk time for strategizing or. 

Or quote, unquote, what works time. I [00:11:00] think that is, is really the critical piece. And I do think a lot of teachers have this in an unofficial capacity. So you see your teacher bestie, how's it working with this kiddo who is a little bit tricky and you chat about it. But I think that there are a lot of other people that need to be looped into this conversation. 

And I think specifically administrators. Who are also coaching others who may be struggling in this area. I think that this is a time where you can really see your teachers shine. If you give them the opportunity to talk about what's working really well in their classroom, or even if they're not describing it. 

And, you know, the way that you're hoping, maybe you can help them explain it in a way, share it with parents. So I think that this is a really critical conversation and I do believe that it happens often, but it often happens in these like casual settings rather than in a, in a more productive setting perhaps. 

So that that's my, those are my two thoughts about this, but I'm really excited to chat about it. Cause I think it [00:12:00] is. Critical and also helpful. And it's something that Shannon and I are so eager to share. This is why we talk about what strategies work best because we want to share our, our toolkit with other teachers. 

And I think that aligning it under the umbrella of where what does it look like in the eyes of a student is absolutely the best way to start like formulating this in a more I don't know. Conventional way. I don't know. Proper way. 

Shannon Betts: And Katherine, to answer your question, like, I'm not an expert on this. 

I mean, this is why I like kept this article close to my desk for for over 10 years. Because we get because it was a challenge to myself to be more collaborative with all the stakeholders involved because We all, whether, whatever role you're in, whether it's the classroom teacher, or the reading specialist, or the coach, or the English learner teacher, or whatever, [00:13:00] you kind of get on your, like, mission, like, lane goggles, you know, and You're just like everybody feels like their mission is the most important, you know, and I've even gotten a little bit of pushback sometimes when I've been a reading specialist and the classroom teacher feels a little like rubbed the wrong way because I'm pulling out the students during their reading block and then, oh, well, they're missing my reading instruction. 

Why is your reading instruction more important than mine? And. I agree with Mary that like the IEP meetings, and also I would add the RTI meetings, whether it's at a tier two or tier three level, are great places to all get on the same page and aligned in the same mission lane, and that's a great place where you can like Mary said, like, Model the strategies that you're working on with the student. 

And I will add that something that's even more powerful that I've done a lot in the last few years is when I bring the students back from pull out, [00:14:00] I will have the student demo the strategy to the classroom teacher and say, This student just had a phenomenal day to day look at what they did to make sure that they got the full meaning and decoding from this text and the student applies that and then I'll say to the teacher, I just use these little code words, you know, as a trigger to remind the student to apply that strategy would really help if you would use that strategy. 

You know that those little trigger words in your classroom as well to just to make sure the student keeps practicing this on the days I don't pull them and then I'll say as well and if there's some other strategy that you know you've seen that really helps please tell me you know what what words to use to remind the student to apply that strategy and that helps us get on the on the same page a little bit more too but Katherine I want to hear like from all the schools you've been in some of the you know big things that y'all said that y'all've learned. 

Katherine Hamilton: I think, I mean, what both of you are saying that really resonates is that, and I think this is just [00:15:00] kind of across the US and how our education system is set up is that we undervalue teacher collaboration and therefore when we think about scheduling it's, it's not a part of the work. And, and so we have to really look strategically at the time that we do have. 

Which is something when we're partnering with schools is we really hone in. We do what we call kind of a learning cycle. So we will start a partnership with a school will walk through classrooms will look at data will really audit and understand. The school its current practices, how, how students are doing with that, we, we like to do those empathy interviews, like understand students perspective, also empathy interviews with teachers, really understanding so that we can best support them and then we really look at kind of what are the resources at [00:16:00] play, and mainly the resource I'm talking about is time. 

It's not it's Oh, we're going to buy this other curriculum. We're going to buy this other thing like it's really time for teachers to invest in their own learning in professional development time to collaborate and share with one another. And we've, over the years, like continued to hone in on less is more. 

Let's do fewer things consistently and at a high level. Then here are eight strategies. And I think it's why this article resonates is like, it's saying that it's saying, Hey, let's not do 20 strategies with kids. Let's, let's give them a strategy that then can grow with them from grade to grade from different setting. 

And the biggest thing that, that we do, you know, once we've done this first part of our, like, learning cycle where we've audited, understand, you know, where they're at, understand their other initiatives, [00:17:00] are they also adopting a new math curriculum? Are they, like, what else is on a teacher's plate so we can work to be aligned? 

We identify generally, like, one or two key strategies that we want to be consistent that are going to improve literacy for multilingual learners, but in doing so, kind of, with these universal design principles, are going to really help all students. And we design, kind of, the next touch point is professional learning, and what we do in that is, We model the strategy. 

So teachers experience the strategy without the cringy, like, pretend you're a student. Like, you know, we try to shy away from that. I feel like teachers hate that, but we just model it with them as adults and kind of, and then we unpack it with them and say, Hey, this is the strategy we use. I'll think kind of, Recently, even though, you know, we're a number of years out of the pandemic, we're still seeing a really [00:18:00] low level of student academic talk. 

Just opportunities for students to, either in conjunction with reading or in conjunction with just grappling with new content. That opportunity for students to really discuss with one another what they're seeing, share ideas. guys. Which has so many benefits. One is just that, you know, there's a quote, whoever's doing the speaking is doing the learning, but it's just the way our brains process and learn. 

But also just that opportunity to have more at bats, so to speak, with language. Like if I'm talking to a partner, and then I'm talking to the class, and then I'm talking to another partner, or a small group, like that's so many more opportunities than if. The teacher calls on one student at a time to share and then getting really explicit about what is the language we're practicing. 

Are we reading an article and our ultimate [00:19:00] critical thinking, you know, with this passage or article is we want to be comparing and contrasting. Then it's about giving students multiple chances to practice that language function. What's the language we use when we compare and contrast? And, and giving them those sentence frames or stems and really saying, like, try this out with your partner and, like, I want you to use this frame and we're going to choral read it together so you can kind of practice how does it feel in your mouth. 

If you speak Mandarin at home with your family, you know, all day long, except at school, sometimes you just need a chance to practice, like, how. you form English words. And so just a lot of these ways for students to practice the language in a lower stakes way. And, and then, you know, we do have opportunities for them to share to a larger group, kind of build up that confidence. 

But when we're teaching teachers, [00:20:00] you know, this strategy. We, we refer to it as structured student talk routines. So having a structure there, what we really do once they've participated in it, we share a little bit of the research about why, you know, teachers are, are smart people. They want to understand why they're doing something. 

And then we really break it down and say, Hey, here's, here's how we do it. Want you to think about like, and we try to really like make it. Something they can just grab onto. And so when we talk about structured student talk, we say you need to have a structure, so students know who's speaking, how much they should speak, who goes first. 

So things like A B partnerships, things like, you know, culture building things. Whose birthday is coming up next? Who's, find someone whose shoes look like yours. Like just little things, but then saying, you know. This person's going to go first, this person's going to go second, because even [00:21:00] taking that away means students brains can focus on the language and focus on the content versus that, are you talking, am I talking, who's going first, what's happening? 

So that structure really lowers that effective filter. And then we say, you know, always provide that really targeted language support. Is it a frame? Are they going to ultimately be comparing and contrasting from the text? Then give them language to compare and contrast. Is it just, is it something where we are reading to glean some academic language? 

So, you want them to be practicing some tier three, some content vocabulary. Give them a word bank. Say, I want you to try out an answer that uses the word a word from this bank, practice it, because we're going to be using it in our writing later. So just these things that are going to give them that deliberate practice. 

And then having these mechanisms for universal accountability. Because [00:22:00] ultimately, that's a big cultural piece. When you tell students, when you inadvertently let students opt out, you don't have that universal accountability. We can. unintentionally be setting low expectations for our students and be sending messages about what we think they're capable of. 

But when we say, okay, you're going to talk to your partner, ready, you know, here's who's going first. And then I circulate and I make sure everyone's speaking. And then I come back and they say, Oh, I think we struggled a little bit with that. We're going to try again. Cause I need to hear everyone's voice and really holding that accountability. 

It's not a gotcha. It's not a scary thing, but saying, This is how we learn in a community, and this is why we do this, you know, bringing students into that. And then also, after students have that opportunity to share with one another, when you do share out to the whole class, and also, Trying to take non volunteers, whether it's, you know, I think there's a stigma [00:23:00] with this idea of like popsicle sticks or, you know, people can feel like, Oh, I'm putting a kid on the spot. 

And the first time might feel that way. But as you build a culture of universal accountability and this culture of we're all learning together, when I asked you to share. It's not because I'm expecting a perfect, correct answer. It's because we're building our, our learning together. And so I want you to share, and I often, when I model this I'll often say, I want you to share what, what you shared with your partner, or something great you heard. 

And you have two choices, so you can kind of, again, lower that effective filter. Their answer doesn't have to be perfect. They can say, oh, my partner shared. That they thought it was interesting, blah, blah, blah. And then, also having in your back pocket, what do you do when a student isn't sure? If you say, oh, I want, you know, student A to respond, and a student goes say, oh, it sounds [00:24:00] like we might need some more time with our partner. 

Does anyone else need time with their partner? Oh, that's not it? Okay, you might need to hear a few models. So I'm going to come back to you. I'm going to call on two other people, and then I want you by then You can repeat something you heard, but I just, I want you to practice that language. And then of course, you know, and I think probably Mary for you, you know, speaking your language, like there are some students whose disabilities may also make it harder to share out. 

And so, you know, we also know in our back pocket, like, This student's going to have a little bit harder time sharing out, so I'm going to go check in with them and their partner. I'm going to scribe what they said, and then they get to read it to the class, or, which is a great accommodation for, Any number of student disabilities, but also a great accommodation for a student still working on their academic English. 

It might be easier for them to read something. Or even depending on a student's language proficiency. You know, we're working with [00:25:00] students who Family, whose family arrived to the U. S. last month. And so saying, when you talk, I've actually paired you with a friend who also knows Spanish. I know you know Spanish and you're learning English. 

That's awesome. I put you with a friend here who knows both Spanish and English. Isn't that so cool? So you can talk in either language. Go for it. I want you to just practice the language. And then slowly you get to. Oh, I heard you all discussing in Spanish. Let's go ahead. I want you, here's a closed sentence that I just want you to fill in the blank for right now in English and just practice that language. 

When I call on you, feel free to read that. And just starting to build that culture. And when you, as a teacher, I'm sure I can, you know, this resonates with all the listeners as a teacher, you want to, you want your kids to be successful. And so also thinking about like, I can hold them accountable when I've also [00:26:00] provided the appropriate scaffolds and supports to them. 

You don't want to leave them hanging out there. And so it's really building up your toolkit. And, and to kind of go back to, like, when we're doing this in professional learning, we're teaching teachers this strategy, the thing we also tell them is, you know, look around the room, you might teach second grade, think about next year, you're going to get a room full of kids who've done this strategy. 

all in first grade. And you teach fifth grade, wow, look it, you're gonna start to have kids who, like, you can do this starting day one and then you get to really focus on the content and the language and starting to get more and more robust with that because the routine is there. Students are used to that. 

It's very similar. You've likely heard, you know, we tell teachers at the beginning of the year when you're doing routines and procedures, go slow to go fast, get the routines and procedures down so that, you know, [00:27:00] later on, you're just going. This is a routine, this is a procedure, take the time to teach it to students, have them be comfortable, have them understand the culture of it and that culture of we're in it together. 

And then you can. Use it all the time and really focus on the language, the literacy, the reading that you're doing, and then you can start to, when you as a teacher feel comfortable as well, say, okay, now I also know, the sentence frames. Oh, next week we're doing an article where we're going to be writing an opinion piece, or we're reading an opinion piece, and then we're going to write an opinion piece. 

So I'm going to pull out language that I want students to use as I prepare to give them those sentence frames. And what's great for you as a teacher and for the students is They know the routine, and now they can just focus in on, oh, my opinion sentence frames, my opinion, word bank, kind of [00:28:00] those things. 

And so that's really, like, where we try to go to is to say, what are these common literacy or academic language building strategies that we can use across the building? And, and that then students learn, teachers learn. So we're focusing on the language and not always on this new thing and this fun thing and this, oh, we're going to try this and that and this. 

And what's so great is that You know, in this professional learning, we model it, we unpack it, and then we have teachers sit and plan for the next, we say the next week, often for the next day. Let's jump in and try it right away. And oh, you know what's great? Is your co teacher, who is that special education teacher, is sitting right next to you. 

Because maybe the only time. You right now have to collaborate is during professional development. So great, like, let's collaborate. And oh, you have a teacher [00:29:00] who's also pulling out your English learners for a designated ELD or an ESL block. Great. Now you know students are doing that in that block as well. 

And so you know you're building on that same strategy. And so we're, because, like I said, in the U. S. we don't value the time, we don't uplift this time for collaboration. What we really try to do is say, wow, you're giving us at Ensemble a sacred two hours to be with your staff for professional development. 

Let's leverage everything we can to help build these common practices. And it's just so important, and And I think just a great time to elevate the importance of like that collaboration between teachers. And then the last thing I'll just say that we do is we follow up the next week pretty immediately with a coaching session of how did it go? 

Where are you [00:30:00] stuck? Like what's happening? And, and to your point, I think Mary, maybe Shannon, one of you had said it earlier. I can't remember, but we got to get administrators on board because if they're the people coaching this, like they need to be in the professional learning. And, and the schools that we work with that are the most successful in making these strides for their students, their administrators are sitting shoulder to shoulder with teachers in the PD, learning, practicing, and then they're also continuing this practice in professional development they are leading. 

They're saying, great, let's continue to do this. And they're saying, great, I'm going to come in your classroom when you do this. Oh, you, you're feeling you're having trouble with this group of students. Let me come in. Let me see. Let me help you problem solve with this idea of we're in this together versus any type of gotcha. 

And so it becomes this whole building practice. And I, and I think that's, that's where you're [00:31:00] gonna get the most bang for your buck is saying, And I, like, I read this article and was like, I could have written this article. Not as well, obviously, but like, I, I live this article every day when we go into schools and we really are like, wow, yeah, this English learner is struggling because they're having, you know, they're supposed to use this strategy here and this strategy here and this graphic organizer here and 

Shannon Betts: their day is disjointed. 

Katherine Hamilton: Oh, yeah. So yeah, I think we can get there. It takes it. We have to be deliberate and it's so hard in the busyness of education. 

Shannon Betts: I really that word is good deliberate because you said like we don't Give a lot. We don't provide and I'm going to say we I'm saying the American education system and probably we have listeners in Australia and UK and Ireland and I suspect those education systems are similar and that they don't provide enough time for teacher collaboration. 

And [00:32:00] so, if we have a very limited amount of time to talk to these other teachers, and we need to get alignment, then we need to prioritize what are we getting alignment on. Are we just talking about using the same resources by the same teachers by teachers author? No. Okay, like we need to, what you, we talked earlier and said we want to make sure we're teaching the students transferable strategies that they can use across the settings. 

Well, you brought up two other Really important things that we need to align, and one of those is common language, and I love what you said about like when you said compare and contrast, you know, and there are certain words that, you know, when you read a sentence, there are certain words in English that will trigger that, oh, this author's about to tell us something that these things have in common, or these are things that You know, this is a trigger word to show that these things are differing, and a lot of times students don't recognize those words in a passage if they're not explicitly taught, and so if we, if, if a lot of [00:33:00] around the support staff and the homeroom setting, if we align in that common language that is used for that standard and work on that with word banks, work on that with Senate stems and make sure that everybody's understanding that language. 

That is going to. Boost their language development so much and the student will see that it's all connected. And then the other piece that you said was that the mechanisms for universal. Universal accountability. We need to have the teachers aligned with the expectation of the exemplar work of that standard and that grade level. 

So what is exemplar work for compare and contrast for a first grader versus a third grader or fourth grader, you know, and a lot of times. I have been guilty of this like when you are in the support staff role or the special ed role, you sometimes you don't mean to, but you sometimes lower your expectations a little bit because you're just like, oh, well, let's celebrate progress. 

Any progress is good. [00:34:00] We want the students to feel successful, but you can't ever lose sight. of the end goal of where you're trying to get the students to because they are going to be held accountable by the state test and they are held accountable for the state standard. And so we constantly, we're providing scaffolds to help the student reach that standard, but we can't lower that standard just because we're in a support role. 

And I think that's important. And I will say classroom teachers have helped me Push myself back up to that grade level standard and say, okay, you're, you're, you're celebrating the success by the student who's two grade levels below, but let's, let's get them up to this level, you know, so I think, I think you just brought up so many great points, and I'm sure Mary wants to respond to because she brought up a lot of things that she supports to. 

Mary Saghafi: I think, I think what was so valuable is that you brought up so many specific scaffolds that are appropriate for all students. And some days on, [00:35:00] on different days, people have better abilities than others. And so it doesn't really matter. You might just be having an off day, but having the opportunity to be able to use a sentence stem to answer your question, or, you know, they're just having an off day, but making it available to all learners who feel the need to. 

Takes the the burden off of a student who feels different for having to use an accommodation. I think that that creates this like global awareness that accommodations don't need to be different. Accommodations need to help you make access and some people would really thrive with that as an accommodation. 

And I think that teachers get uncomfortable because there have been. Just what I have noticed in teacher talk spaces on social medias and things like that, that people think that there are a lot more accommodations. Well, I think we have a lot more students needing [00:36:00] accommodations because we're not teaching in a way that makes all students. 

able to participate, whether it's through language opportunities or whether it's through social connections or whether it's through you know, written access, there's a lot of different ways that our students can continue to participate. So I really loved that. Another thing I thought I would share is that my experience I was able to work at a school who used gosh, I'm forgetting the name of it. 

I they are not described as graphic organizers, but however they have I'm thinking I'm not going to name it. Thinking Maps. What's it? Yeah, it was Thinking Maps. Yep. So anyway, so with Thinking Maps it's also a universal and global kind of school initiative that everyone participates in. And I will say that I felt like that. 

My greatest successes as a co teacher happened while we were able to use all of this common language. It wasn't that I had to come in with my own special strategy to help my other learners. It was that [00:37:00] we were all using similar strategies and I was able to Modify the curriculum as needed. And I think that's truly what the work of a special ed support teacher is for. 

And, and my paraprofessionals could also participate in that in a really meaningful and equitable way, because we were all using similar language and similar visual devices to help our students hone into these keywords. So Shannon, you were saying, you know, there are some keywords that come up with academic language that really trigger what you want to know. 

And I think that That took this like kind of burden of reinventing the wheel that we sort of started talking about at the very beginning of this session that, you know, we kind of stay in our own lane. We don't, you know, we want to do something that works for us that makes our brain happy because it, but I think that the accessibility piece of having everyone in the school use something similar, such as common language, it really does make a big difference. 

And I think the other piece that I [00:38:00] really love about. Talking about language development is that language development is critical for all English learners, whether it's your first language or not. And so that is. Truly kind of a piece of being an English teacher that I kind of touched on before too. 

How aware are we of what our students need in the realm of code switching to academic language? And what are those developmental milestones that our students need to have to participate that way? And now that we're very aware of accommodations that are needed or different modifications that are needed, When that's really clear and everybody has the same idea of what that is, I think that it makes communication a lot easier on the part of the teacher and the students. 

So this is amazing. I'm so happy that you're sharing this with us. 

Katherine Hamilton: Well, I think as you both were sharing, I think it goes back to people will ask about, you know, [00:39:00] our work at Ensemble and say, oh, so you coach language teachers. Oh, you coach the ESL or, ELD, whatever you want to say, you coach those teachers and, and I actually say no, we coach for tier one instruction because if you look at where students spend most of their time, it's in tier one instruction. 

And so yes, we also coach those folks and ensure that. And I still call that tier one because that is what a student is, you know, that is part of their day, what they are guaranteed you know, and we want that language development time to be really important and impactful for a English learner. But really, it's what's happening the entire day in the classroom. 

And how do we make that Language rich. How do we make comprehensible input? Like, a lot of these things [00:40:00] of like, how do you just maximize every instructional moment for language? And, I think a really common thing we've been hearing in secondary schools is also shifting the mindset for all teachers to say, I am a literacy teacher in math, I'm a literacy teacher in social studies, and really understanding that, yes, and I'll use math, I was a math teacher. 

And so people are always surprised. They're like, oh, like you do so much literacy work. And I'm like, yeah, but interestingly enough. Language was such a barrier in math. It was something I ended up thinking so much about. That's how I ended up on this career path. And until we change that mindset of we have to make tier one instruction impactful for all of our students. 

It's not, you can't wait for, you know, You can't wait for a para to come over and help help a student one on one, you [00:41:00] can't wait for pull out time, you can't wait for the one period a day where the student is, you know, pulled out and working on their English because we just, we're, we're very much underserving. 

And so that's that, that mindset we have is like, everyone is actually learning academic English. And It's all about that, that tier one environment. And I love what you said about when we have common strategies, really all adults can use them. So a paraprofessional, a teacher, a specialist teacher because one of the things when we walk through classrooms that we often talk about is, like, how are we maximizing all the adults in the room? 

And, and too often we see a paraprofessional being utilized for compliance management, behavior management, and it's like, instead, if this person really, if we leverage their skills and talents, and they [00:42:00] were another academic resource, they'd probably still be doing behavior management, but because the students would be able to be more engaged because they'd be getting the right supports that they need. 

And so that would, that really resonated of like how, how we can use common literacy strategies for all adults to be more engaged. Incredibly impactful. We know adults want to be. We know. I think one of our other challenges is we don't support, you know, all the adults in the classroom enough. And this can be a really great way to because it's, you know, let's let's limit the strategies. 

Something you said I just wanted to it really sparked in me. I think a common misconception teachers really worry about this idea of over scaffolding. And, and, and yes, to ultimately we have standards we have learning targets we [00:43:00] have, you know, state accountability testing but even more broadly we think about the, the literate. 

so much. Adults that we want to help, you know, create for these post secondary options for college career. We think about the literacy skills, people you and me need to have to have this conversation and what our goals are for students. And I think that. Overscaffolding is a real challenge. I'm glad teachers are thinking about it, but, but I think shifting, helping them shift the mindset to, it's okay to start at a place that I feel like is over scaffolding because it's easier to remove scaffolds than it is, I think, to initially put them in place. 

And so I've had the debate with. I'm thinking about a specific teacher. She's a secondary social studies teacher. She's phenomenal. She, her kids write at such a high level. She really pushes them and she was very [00:44:00] hesitant to. to use like sentence starters or sentence frames. And I said, I said, okay, I want you to pause. 

You're not using them right now. Are all of your students, when you say go talk to your partner, like, are all of your students talking to their partner? And she's like, no, not yet. And I said, the students who are talking to their partners already, are fine. Those are not the students we're talking about right now in this conversation. 

If you provide a sentence frame or some type of language support, maybe those students will use it and use a little less brain power to think of their own, you know, language stem or way to start their sentence. But what it's going to do is it's going to get all students participating. And I was like, then you have that structure. 

They know they're looking for this. For your students who are already participating, you could use this as an opportunity to level up their language. You can use more sophisticated language. You can use more content vocabulary. You can [00:45:00] use more of those kind of tier two, higher level academic words. And so I'm like, it's not about You're thinking about a specific group of students and worried about over scaffolding and, and kind of saying, Oh, it's okay that not everyone participates because I'm, I'm worried about this student. 

And so just flipping that script and just saying, Hey, what if we thought about it this way? And, like, also those students may not use it. Like, they're already speaking. And so I, and there's such a, and it comes from a really good place. I don't want that to be misconstrued. It comes from a place of My students, this is a, a very high need community students, predominantly coming from lower socioeconomic status households, and she's amazing where she's like, these students deserve a rigorous education. 

I'm going to hold them to high standards like so it's coming from an amazing, amazing place. And it's just shifting a [00:46:00] little bit of that mindset of. You can also, like, I tell teachers, I used to, in my math class, like, print out little, like, scaffolded questions if we were working on a harder problem, and I would cut them up into strips and pass them out as students needed them. 

Because I was like, not everyone needs these, like, some people can think about the problem holistically, but some students do, so I'm going to pass them out who, who does need it, or I'm going to go over it with my paraprofessionals so they can pull a small group, like, we can really, think about like, just because we put in a support doesn't mean Every kid has to use it and we're bringing down the rigor level. 

There are ways to differentiate that because it's such a real stress for teachers of reaching the rigor level of the standard and it's so, yeah, it's so challenging. But 

Shannon Betts: you brought up a good point and I mean, I know you've seen this. It's like, and I know Mary has two over the course of your career. 

It's like when the students feel comfortable [00:47:00] themselves, they push away the scaffold. They're like, I don't need the training wheels anymore. I got this. And that boosts their confidence and engagement so much more than never putting that scaffold there in the first place. 

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Shannon Betts: Feeling overwhelmed about all the demands of your students. Looking for more resources and strategies to help your readers? 

Mary Saghafi: Come join our Patreon community where we'll support you in implementing all the best practice pieces in your reading instruction. Depending on your level of support, you can meet with us bi weekly or monthly for assistance with all aspects of your literacy teaching. 

Shannon Betts: Watch us model effective strategies and techniques. Reference the resource library to find curated sources for our favorite activities. Learn from and participate in our deep dive topics where we share specifics about our instruction, such as classroom management, assessment, introducing sight words, teaching, writing, and so much more.[00:48:00] 

Mary Saghafi: You'll have the confidence and tools to know that you're working smarter, not harder, to meet your students needs. Feel better about your teaching today by checking out the various levels of support offered through www. patreon. com backslash reading teachers lounge. 

Shannon Betts: We're here to help you and your students. 

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Katherine Hamilton: Or even saying, wow, did someone say this a different way? Let's add your frame that everyone can use. Like, there are ways. Yeah, to include 

Shannon Betts: everyone. 

Katherine Hamilton: And, and to go back to the article, like, you know, we talk about students brains jumping from all these strategies. The other piece is, student ownership. If I go to school and, and each different teacher teaches me something different, I'm learning, I just need to wait and let the teacher tell me what to do.[00:49:00] 

But if we flip this script to really, whenever we work on, you know, a common strategy with a school, part of what we also do is say, how are you going to share this with students? If suddenly, All the time you're asking students to turn and talk to a neighbor and share out and use sentence stems, like, tell them why, like, pause, have this discussion, and, and it really gives them that ownership, and then invite them in, like, if you, if I talk a lot about universal accountability and we're a community of learners, Give space also for, hey, did anyone share this in a different way? 

Let's add your idea to the sentence frames. Or like, do you have an anchor chart that a student can refer to so they don't have to rely on you and ask you, hey, what am I supposed to do? Or whatever, like, what are the ways that you That we really help students be in charge of [00:50:00] their own learning, including these academic strategies, because we can't hover over them when they take a state test. 

We can't hover over, like, remember this thing when they're out taking the SAT or they're at their job. And so, really taking it that step further and honoring students. honoring students as whole people who can internalize and lead and just really like pouring into that. I, I just got excited about thinking, you know, that is 

Shannon Betts: no, that is so important. 

I mean, Mary describes herself as an advocate and she's advocating for the students, but it's so true that the common denominator in a student's day is the student. And so we need to explicitly. tell them and give them permission to be their own advocate. And one of the reasons I want to call this episode, the reading team is that's how I phrase it to the students after I read this article, which I have a time date stamped on my email is Monday, August 23rd, AM.[00:51:00] 

That's when I sent it to the other team members and my support staff. But I would, as soon as I read this article, that's what I started phrasing it to the students. I said, okay, we We are your reading team. We are your reading coaches, and we are all working together to help you be the best reader you can be. 

Somebody might be your pitching coach, and somebody might be your running coach, and somebody might be your nutrition coach, or whatever. But we want the students to see that we're all sharing these tricks with them, but then they're applying it to their reading. And if we just explicitly phrase it that way and give permission to the kids, Then they will take ownership and see that alignment for themselves, even if they're not in a school setting, you know, like where Ensemble is leading the PD in this way. 

Mary Saghafi: I was also going to share that this is not for exclusively secondary students. You can start this in kindergarten and first grade and I highly recommend allowing students to voice their what, what [00:52:00] helps them learn the most when they feel like they're, they're ready to do it independently and, and share with you when they're ready to do it independently. 

And if they're not at that place, you do coach them along. You say, Okay, how does how did this activity feel for you? Easy, medium or hard? Is that different from the last time we practiced it? And that creates such an amazing, safe place for students to start to take risks in your classroom, even just starting at that point, just letting them kind of feel, you know, how a task that they've done over time has changed. 

And I think that this idea of Metacognition, giving students permission to really understand how they learn, is so critical in developing well rounded students and well rounded adults and citizens, which is ideally what we're trying to produce is People who can interact in their own world and think for themselves and so I do think that this is so [00:53:00] critical but I also want to like kind of come back once more to the idea that when you flip the script and make it accessible to everybody. 

It is amazing how people can shine and soar. And so Shannon and I have actually been talking. So I might just kind of like illustrate this in a different way. So we were talking about this on one of our Patreon episodes, but when you're sharing out a whole group lesson, you're sharing your lesson. And then maybe you, practice a few items together. 

And it's the, we do, or I do, we do you do. And then as a group, you say, okay, I think if you feel like you're confident enough to go try this on your own, go for it and try it on your own. If you're still needing a little bit more support, stay here on the rug with me. We'll keep working it out together. And maybe then you practice one more and then a few kids go. 

And that trickle back effect. Even if you still have three kids who work the entire worksheet with you, you've given it to them to make the decision whether or not they need that [00:54:00] extra support. And you are providing it in a more direct way. And so giving a whole group lesson, but then allowing that scaffolding like that and putting it back on the students to use that's essential. 

And I think that that practice needs to happen a lot more in classrooms, because I think we've. Kind of come to this idea where, okay, well, we need small group attention for students. So I better choose my group of students and then they're going to stay in that group and then they're going to rotate around the classroom. 

They don't actually have as much support from the teacher as maybe they might need. And so just illustrating this is kind of another example of, of universally acceptable accommodations. So I just wanted to share that. Cause I thought about that a lot as we were chatting. 

Katherine Hamilton: Yeah, absolutely. And, and I'm, I'm actually thinking back to my own classroom and I would often do that. 

We do like a warm up where I would pull, you know, looking at my exit ticket or assessment data from the day before and I'd pull some key things that [00:55:00] clearly students were struggling with. You know, are things that would like highlight some misconceptions, and we would do a warm up, they would have some time to grapple independently, then we'd review it, and then I would kind of give them, initially the scaffold was, I would, I would kind of telegraph for them, like, if you were able to do each of these problems, you're, I would say you're ready for, like, option A is like, you're going to go and do this review, like, I'll invite you, you can work with a team there. 

Option B, if, if some of them struggle, if you struggled with some, like, I'd invite you to stay with me, but then quickly maybe excuse yourself, and then if you really struggled with these, and that's where you're at, like, I'm going to guide you through a few more and highlight a few things, and just doing that. 

Also, similar to a consistent, you know, literacy strategy, but doing that common classroom strategy, and, and guiding them through how do you self assess, because it's easy to make [00:56:00] assumptions, you know, you can work with a second grader who's super verbal and you're like, oh, great, like, sometimes we take their verbal or other, you know, behavior and think, Oh, they have these metacognitive skills. 

We kind of are like inflate some of those skills based on how easy it is to talk to them. And we forget, Oh, we need to kind of teach this to students and give them like, Hey, As you did this problem, if you felt like, wow, I knew what to do next, I feel really good about it, like, you might be here, and this is what you might choose to do. 

And if you felt like, I'm starting to get it, but like, you want to be more sure, like, and really telegraphing that metacognition, helps, you know, so, so much. And and, you know, we can apply it to content. We can apply it to literacy. We can apply it to academic language acquisition, like all those things, but giving students that ownership of their education is, I think, one of the most important things you can [00:57:00] do as a teacher. 

Shannon Betts: Yeah. And I mean, how much more exciting is a student's day at that point, you know, I mean, we're going to do a future episode this season about student engagement, but you can't have any, any conversation about talking about student engagement, you know, I mean, we. Mary and I have worked with struggling readers for most of our career and we have just seen just countless cases of like these third, fourth, and fifth graders who like school is just happening to them and they're very, I know you've seen it too with English language learners that are plopped into this American place with these strange brown foods wrapped in plastic and you know like they just like, I used to teach refugees here in Atlanta and they were just like what are these school lunches? 

But they, you know, like, They just school is happening to them and they don't feel a part of it and they might just be passed from classroom to classroom and grade to grade where they continue not to feel a part of it. And then, at some [00:58:00] point, they're just like, what's the point? You know, why should I take risk or try? 

But when you, when you encourage that self assessment and self awareness I mean, the students. They just respond in the most amazing ways and they just, you know, they've just wowed me in, in, in their drive and just how, how much they can grow in language in one year when you empower them to advocate for themselves. 

Katherine Hamilton: It's, it's similar to the, I think we've all felt at some point in our teaching practice, like the pendulum swings to the, like, you're going to have a learning objective and you're going to write it on the board. And, and I think, you know, it's easy to get like, like, Oh, this is a compliance thing. I have to write on the board every day. 

But if we pause and say, I'm, I'm writing it on the board because I'm going to talk about it with students and say, Hey, today, this is what we're, we're [00:59:00] learning, like, by the end of this reading lesson, like, you're going to be able to say, I can, compare and contrast, you know, the two ideas in the story. And like here, you know, some schools do language objectives, which is a great way to articulate the language students are practicing, like how they're going to show that. 

And, and I think it's, Good leadership, school leadership, good teaching moves from like a compliance. I have to write it on the board to, Oh, I'm doing that because I need to, I want students to own this learning with me and to know what am I learning today. And if I'm not on track to that, if I'm, we're halfway through the lesson and I don't know what's happening. 

Like, do I also have, is there a culture here where I can say, Whoa, teacher, like what? I'm stuck. I don't know. Because when you think about it that way, when you have a classroom of 20, 25 kids who can all [01:00:00] monitor their learning along with a hard working teacher who's checking for understanding, you know, all this, like, wow, you've just multiplied one times 25. 

Like, that is a 25x, like, impact that we can have. And it's very much why, like, we You know, when we're talking about serving English learners, we're talking about being explicit about the language, and it's about not just that input, but like explicit about what does it look like to say this? What does this look like to write it? 

What are the scaffolds and supports? So students can be actively practicing the same way why we talk so much about structured student talk. If we're having a conversation and it's teacher, student, teacher, student, maybe two, three, four students get to practice. But if we do teacher structured student talk routine and a few students share out, every student is getting that opportunity to practice. 

So again, we're multiplying that impact. And, [01:01:00] and really like when it gets down to it, I think what's so hard about teaching is. It's hard not to feel overwhelmed by the task of growing students in many classrooms that's more than a year, they're coming in behind, we're working to teach them that grade level, engaging, affirming, meaningful, you know, content with skills that are, they're still being developed from prior years, maybe still developing English skills. 

academic English proficiency. I understand why teachers are overwhelmed. I felt that immense overwhelm as a teacher. And so it's saying, what are some of these one, two strategies that we can use across the building that are going to multiply that impact and make Every class discussion, an opportunity for every student to practice their language versus the [01:02:00] one or two who raised their hand and, and it's just, you know, I think when we break it down, it's, it's scaffolding for teachers and we break it down into those little pieces because we know teachers are the hardest work, like the job is to, And so if we can provide those tools for teachers and honor what they're doing and the desires they have for students, like, that's, that's how we make the change. 

Other otherwise, you know, I understand burnout. I understand that the crisis we're going through, because, you know, We are not putting those tools in the teacher's hands. 

Shannon Betts: This is such an important conversation and you're the right person to have it. Like we just appreciate you joining us, the Read Teacher's Lounge. And I hope that this encourages everybody listening to, to, to talk about this in their own teacher's lounges, you know, or to talk about it. In the hallway [01:03:00] while waiting for bus duty or whatever, you know, waiting for the lunch line to go through of just like, you know, are we, we talk a lot about that little silly phrase like work smarter not harder, but these are like the specifics of that to avoid that burnout that you were just talking about, and also to avoid the confusion and the disengagement on the part of the student. 

Let's make sure that we're, we're making the right choices and that every decision that we're making also makes sense for the students, you know, if that objective is on the board, do they understand why that objective is there? Like, how does that objective help them in their real everyday life other than just taking up an hour of their time? 

Mary Saghafi: Right. Yeah, I 100 percent agree. And I think too, that we know that. People who are happy at their schools tend to be really happy because of the school leadership there, and they feel very well supported and so if you happen to be in a leadership role at your [01:04:00] school or hoping to become a school leader. 

I think that there's so much. Really great advice that that provides a great trickle down effect for staff and and that number one being take some of the things off of the plate prioritize what's the most important and provide that along with support for teachers. So And that goes a long way to helping students. 

Oh, I have so enjoyed this conversation. It's really been just terrific. And for me, it's uplifting too, because I think like I said, a lot of times teachers are talking about you know, strategies that work really well. But in, in too casual of settings, it really needs to be elevated a little bit to what works well. 

So thank you so much for the work that you're doing and for sharing with us today. 

Katherine Hamilton: Yes, and I will, if I can just put a little plug of, like, it was so exciting to, to talk with you all and, and your perspective, and I always like to say, like, [01:05:00] we like to welcome people into our Ensemble Learning family, and so I will, I will say, like, reach out to me, I would be happy to share tools and connect with folks, like we, we have that luxury of focusing on equity for multilingual learners, where we know teachers have a hundred things on their plate and school leaders as well. 

And so, you know, come join our family so we can help you. You know, and, and just really excited to, to hopefully spread this idea of how schools can, can support teachers and, and obviously ultimately support the students and their families. 

Shannon Betts: Invitation accepted. RSVP, yes. And we're, we mentioned a lot of specifics in this episode discussion. 

And so listeners, please check your podcast app or also our website for the show notes for this specific episode to get all those direct links. And then also follow us on our social media accounts at Reading Teachers Lounge, because There's just so much I want to flesh out from this conversation. 

You gave so many [01:06:00] practical tips for scaffolds and things like that, and we're going to be highlighting those you know, in the weeks after this episode airs on our social media accounts, so. 

Katherine Hamilton: Wonderful. Great, 

Shannon Betts: so thank you. 

Katherine Hamilton: Thank you so much.