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Reading Teachers Lounge
Reading Teachers Lounge
AD FREE 7.18 Season 7 Finale
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Subscribe and receive ad-free content and exclusive bonus episodes!Shannon and Mary look back over Season 7 and reflect on what really matters for our reading students. "The right things for our learners" emerged as the unofficial theme of our seventh season. This phrase encapsulates what each of us strives for – cutting through the noise to identify the most impactful practices for the unique students in front of us.
The conversations with our guests this season revealed a common thread: the need to simplify and focus on what's most important. In this episode, Shannon and Mary share some of their key takeaways from the discussions with the podcast guests over the course of the season. They also provide details about the professional learning they've done over the past year, changes they've made in their own teaching practices, and new resources they're using with their students.
We want to hear from YOU in Season 8! If you're interested in joining us as a guest to discuss real classroom experiences, email us at team@readingteacherslounge.com or reach out through our social media handle @ReadingTeachersLounge
LINKS FOR RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE:
- Magic School AI
- Chat GPT (Mary uses for decodables)
- Dyslexia GA DOE resources
- Season 7 overall link
- SWI resouces
- Uncovering the Logic of English by Denise Eide *Amazon affiliate link
- All About Spelling
- Spelling for Life by Lyn Stone *Amazon affiliate link
welcome to the reading teachers lounge. Shannon, we have made it. This is our final episode of season seven. We have episode 18, our season finale.
Shannon Betts:This has been a season of like it doesn't. You know, we always like record the opener and we're like we have all these plans and then like um, what you know? God laughs while you make plans, or something for sure. So anyway, that's what's happened this whole season. So I'm eager to just sort of unpack it all with you and um review what's happened over the course of this season and to kind of talk about what's next as well.
Mary Saghaif:Yeah, even so, I will just start by sharing, like, even though I feel like behind the scenes it's been a bit rocky for us, but I really am so proud of the content that we have in this season and I think that our listeners have gotten some really good advice from a lot of the guests that we've had. I think our topics are just I don't know so interesting and relevant for what's going on in the field. Absolutely, and I was just wondering do you want to start by maybe sharing a treasured guest that we had or some of your favorites? I have to say I was looking and I'm having a hard time choosing, to be perfectly honest, it's hard, like I've got the season seven episodes from our website pulled up.
Shannon Betts:By the way, that's one of the things we did this season is that we redesigned our website, and so if y'all haven't checked that out, definitely go visit our website because it has a nice new professional look. Um, yeah, and I'm looking through all of this, um, as a group. I really like the first couple episodes we did at the start of the season with the, with the spelling theme, because that really like professionally turned me into like, into a direction of like really delving into morphology and improving my teaching practice around morphology.
Mary Saghaif:You're talking about season seven, episode four. Word knowledge with Adam and Heidi from dropping knowledge with Heidi.
Shannon Betts:Yes, and then spelling that sticks with Rachel as well.
Mary Saghaif:Exactly. Yep, so I would say that definitely led. Yeah, so I would say that that definitely led. Yeah, I would say that those are some areas that kind of sparked right and we love catching up with Rachel as well, our fellow Atlantan, yes, but she's so good about giving specific strategies. I didn't mention her handle, but it's mindful teacher Rachel. And that is episode five. Spelling that sticks, but I have to say the one there's actually the two at the very beginning. Karen gross is just such a lovely human and she talks a lot about you know what the pandemic did for teachers and how, how difficult it is to experience stress and trauma and what that means. But then she gave such good advice about how to mend and just accept what has been and how that has kind of like changed your perception in the world and how to you know kind of keep moving forward.
Shannon Betts:That like wabi-sabi my takeaway from that episode. My favorite one was the paper clips and like where she had us actually like link those paper clips and how that was showing that. That was like creating neural links in our minds and unpacking trauma, which was just so cool so good.
Mary Saghaif:And then the book equity I didn't realize.
Shannon Betts:um, yeah, that was early on in the season, that was just episode three, but we had those great people from Scholastic.
Mary Saghaif:Yeah. So Marty and Judy came on from Reach Out and Read and I loved how we can support the community and still get high quality books into young hands, families, and make sure that they're supporting literacy at an early age. So I thought that was really helpful as well, and that perspective is going to definitely stick with me, especially because I work so much with parents, making sure that I'm providing them with. They're constantly asking what should I do, what can I do, and I think that those are some great actions that that that that group is working towards for getting the quality books into students' hands and training physicians yeah.
Shannon Betts:That was a cool episode. Yeah, a bucket list. I wanted to always meet Dr Shanahan and so I was so glad to talk to him for our 13th episode and I really connected with him, with the way that I've connected with Wiley Blevins when we've had him online on the air of just like okay, like we get it. You know, like we we kind of approach things in a similar way and like a both and way, like Wiley has said, like exploring the nuances among the extremes within, you know, the literacy community right now and I really appreciate that they like Timothy, just like like drilled down of, like okay, let's cut the noise and like let's just focus on these things. And I really appreciated talking to him and I was surprised, but how much I really really enjoyed even though executive functioning is your thing like I really loved that episode with our most recent guest.
Mary Saghaif:Yeah with Doug Fisher and Matt Strader. On what you said about talking with Dr Tim Shanahan, I think cutting through the noise is so overwhelming sometimes because teachers are pulled in so many directions and so voices like Tim Shanahan's is so helpful to me. I really love reading his blog posts on Sunday mornings. I think that he really gives great insight and has so much experience. And then again, like I would say, maybe my favorite episode was the executive functioning demands, because I think that both Dr Doug Fisher and Dr Matt Strader I think that they have a really good sense of the empathy that's appropriate for our students and how to really work within their you know, with their, with students' strengths and making sure that we are providing scaffolding and then slowly taking away scaffolding so that students are really prepared to take learning on themselves right.
Shannon Betts:Yeah, so like, even though our season was seemingly about a lot of different topics, they were actually all related because they all, like, layer upon each other Student engagement, layers upon data-driven instruction, you know, layers upon you know, catering and understanding the needs, the language demands of the students and the executive functioning demands of the students, like, I mean, the episode with Dr Shanahan was called the Right Things for Our Learners, but that could honestly be the theme of the season the Right Things for Our Learners, the right things for our learners and so I hope that listeners can see that layering effect and that we're not trying to like, add more noise, we're not trying to tell more things to do, we're just kind of trying to show how these things are connected. You're basically, you know, using data to see what the kids needs and you're meeting them where they are to provide those needs.
Mary Saghaif:Yeah, and I think that another way that I've sort of described it in a lot of the episodes too, is like what are the behaviors that teachers should be either doing, or what are the behaviors that you're looking for within your students?
Shannon Betts:And to show their learning is activated.
Mary Saghaif:Exactly and showing that those students feel sure that they are doing the right thing, that they know how to move forward and that that foundation is solid so that they can move on to more complex tasks and handle that work. And to do that, you really have to provide a safe learning environment. It has to be a place where the teacher feels confident in their ability to teach what is expected, and I guess that was one of the reflection points that I kind of had. So I'm going to switch gears just a smidgen, because it was something that I was reflecting on just from the beginning of the year.
Mary Saghaif:So this year we chatted about how the dyslexia bill in Georgia was rolled out just this year, and so what that meant is that they were assessing students in the primary grades to see if they should be, if they would be flagged as having dyslexic traits not giving any diagnoses, not doing that, but just noticing to see if any of those traits are hindering their literacy progress.
Mary Saghaif:And so what I saw was that in the majority of the schools that I'm working with, there is a lot of great progress. There are a lot of reading coaches that are really helping, support with quality resources. I'm seeing teachers with a lot more ability and skills to teach phonics appropriately with the right dose. But not just that, but really building that knowledge and vocabulary and weaving a really strong literacy block together. So I've seen that tremendously. I've also seen some schools where there is just not the same sense of organization and clarity for the teachers and I want to really emphasize I never believe that it is a lack of desire on the part of the teachers. I really truly feel like all teachers just want to be able to serve the kids.
Shannon Betts:Yeah, they have great the best of intentions, Of course.
Mary Saghaif:But when you are restricted with resources or you're restricted by, you know, the obligations that the district is putting on you or that the school itself is putting on you, it can be really frustrating, and so I definitely have seen that part as well. But I see that it's more of like schools having difficulty combining curriculum and resources and training for teachers, rather than a lack of desire. But sometimes I think that that gets misplaced upon the student, and I've still seen that in a number of instances this year too. So it's a little disheartening. But I do see, overwhelmingly, I've seen a lot of progress, especially in the last five years, since the rollout has sort of begun here in Georgia.
Shannon Betts:And that's why in season eight we do want to have an episode about curriculum, right?
Mary Saghaif:Right. Well, that's the thing is that we're noticing that. So I think you know, overall, the whole arch of this season is, you know, teachers have a lot of expectations and things have changed quickly. You know, like we have access to AI, we have access to so many technology tools we have access to and so much information can be really overwhelming, and it's also overwhelming for our students. So being able to like be a straight shooter like Tim Shanahan or Matt Strater, I thought did such a great job of that too just really cutting through and being like this is the priority. This is what you really need to focus on, or these are the top five things you need to focus on.
Shannon Betts:And what I'm doing as we have conversations with our guests and then I apply it to my own teaching practice is I'm learning from all of them. I'm reading primary sources from books you know, professional books. I'm taking some professional classes. I'm getting a lot of that input, you know, and consuming a lot of new knowledge and input. And then I have to take time to just process and reflect and think about the student and then look at all of the input through the lens of the students that I'm currently working with and then the next right moves appear for me. It's like I just have to like take it in pause and then like filter it through the lens of my current students. I can't think about my class like a couple years ago. I have to think about, like where I am in this season of my life and the current students that I'm working with, and then I'm able to like choose the best changes to apply for my students or just tweaks and adjustments to make.
Mary Saghaif:Yeah, I think that that's a really good point, and I can recall really wanting to do that when I was teaching as well, and also feeling kind of just overwhelmed by the whole thing. I didn't have enough processing time was something that was really challenging for me in the classroom. But additionally, I think that you kind of hone your craft too, as you, you know, read these primary resources you. You could understand and relate to them in different ways. So I hope that us sharing this knowledge with our listeners is allowing them that time to kind of like percolate.
Shannon Betts:You're right, there's not enough percolation time. I mean. I think that's why some of my best teaching ideas happen in the shower, and I know I'm not the only one who's over seven.
Mary Saghaif:So many colleagues are like yes, and I think that's because, like when there's no sound, you know.
Shannon Betts:So like some days when my brain was feeling like too full, I would have to even turn off music. I would even have to turn off podcasts and things like that in the commute, because that was another time before and after school where those things could just sort of percolate under the surface back in my subconscious and then get sorted and synthesized as needed.
Mary Saghaif:Yeah, yeah, totally. Um. Well, I will say that the other big thing, I think, that you and I both took on this year was learning from Pete Bowers and diving into morphology and trying to not feel uncomfortable about the morphology aspect because, um and specifically like the technique called structure word inquiry, which is an approach um of of of really analyzing an inquiry based um at analyzing of the structure of English with students.
Mary Saghaif:And I was going to say I think the part that was most intimidating for me is this inquiry-based where you're searching for through words and it's almost like incidental learning, because you want it to be a word that is meaningful in context for what you're teaching at that time, a word that is meaningful in context for what you're teaching at that time and you want to teach students how the process of analyzing words works. And I think that that was.
Shannon Betts:We had a little like push and shove with him, like I did privately too in some of my trainings with him, because we've been so focused on like structured, explicit instruction that like I was like, but I need to scope and sequence, like where's the scope and sequence, like what am I supposed to do? And like really I appreciate that structured inquiry pulled me back from that a little bit, because then the episode we had with Nancy Young resonated so much more I was going to say that too, from that a little bit, because then the episode we had with Nancy Young resonated so much more.
Shannon Betts:I was going to say that too. Yeah, where it's like okay, maybe like not every student needs this amount of structured literacy, and we might be leaving some students behind by not providing enough inquiry.
Mary Saghaif:Well, and it's again, it's once you recognize that your students are sure, recognize that your students are sure, how are you able?
Shannon Betts:to pull away.
Mary Saghaif:So that they can take off on their own? How can you give them that launching pad without handholding too much?
Shannon Betts:And it's so interesting Right, so that then they can be engaged and be more the drivers of their own learning Right.
Mary Saghaif:So I have a new student and I think that his family would be okay with me sharing a little bit of information about this. He has a diagnosis of ADHD and he's going into second grade, but he has this very bad habit of just guessing immediately, and we know that that's a common trait for children who you know have a first letter the same, or is it just a guess?
Shannon Betts:that makes sense in context or it's just a guess.
Mary Saghaif:A lot of times it's just a guess, because it's always consistent that way. But his motivation level, I would say, is the piece that is actually the number one thing that I want to work on with him. Okay, because he's a super smart kid, things often come really easy to him and, as we often talk about, when you hit this part where school starts to get a little bit harder because you can't just immediately know, because of your experience or background knowledge or however it is, I think our last session, when I was chatting with him, I would say I would be pointing to the word and his eyes would come up and look up at the ceiling which is also very common when I work with students and I would see him look at the first letter. Sometimes my students will look at the word for a couple seconds and glance up. I know that that's processing time.
Mary Saghaif:This was not that. This was let me look at the first couple of letters and guess a totally random word, and so I would say I need you to focus on the letters. If you don't know it, your first thing that you need to do is sound it out or tap it out, whichever is more comfortable, and that was all I said, and we would work on it, and then I would say it again, and then we would work on it and we would do a little more independent not independent reading, but guided reading and again. So you know, like working on motivation, working on strategies like this.
Shannon Betts:So much of it is like noticing these small behaviors, like we were talking about before before I had students do that all the time they would look at my forehead oh yes, Looking and reading, and I would have. I would like kind of put my hand like a visor, you know, like over my eyes and be like are the words on my forehead? Are the words on my forehead Like look down, look at the words, look at the letters? And then I like how Pete added to that, not just sounding it out but spelling it out, and then that sort of like bypasses like a different part of the brain, and so they're paying attention just to the order of the letters, not necessarily like getting lost in symphonic sounds.
Mary Saghaif:I'm so glad you mentioned that because that was something that I did work on with him yesterday and actually two students like that and I've been implementing that strategy. It's kind of become second nature to me, but that is a really important skill where they really need to name the letters, especially if that's a weakness. Even some of our older readers might not have the alphabetical.
Shannon Betts:I'm helping. That really helps with BD reversals as well.
Mary Saghaif:Oh, definitely, yep, definitely. Oh, I love chatting with you about our students Me too.
Shannon Betts:Let's have a podcast where we talk about this regularly. So, yeah, this school year for me, you know this was the first year I wasn't in a school setting and I did tutoring, and I appreciate all your support. Listening to our private bonus episodes, that's pretty much you could hear sort of my journey through learning how to be a more effective tutor one-on-one, because it is a different ballgame than working with small groups, as either push in or pull out in the school setting, because you have to keep the kids engaged for the whole hour and you have to change up activities and understand the pace and keep you know Anyway, so I really, really enjoy it, though, and I love how closely you can feel the impact of the work that you do with the students one-on-one, so I've really enjoyed that.
Mary Saghaif:Me too. No, I'm happy for you and I feel like my practice has been, you know, evolving for quite a long time. But I feel like the one thing I'm like working on this year and next year for sure, it's boundaries and self-care, because I feel like I have not always made that a priority for myself and for my family. And as a teacher, you know that, like you're giving a lot of your energy and empathy and your desire to help people and that can drain you fairly quickly and I have a yes person by nature and I want to help and it is genuine. And then later on I feel the impact and it was like, was like, oh, I forgot to put up that slow down sign and you get burnt out and overextended yeah but I am.
Mary Saghaif:I am really trying to use the number of strategies this year, and this summer has definitely been more successful on that front. Good, I'm proud of myself. For that one thing I'm going to work on, probably not this summer.
Shannon Betts:I think I'm proud of myself for that One thing I'm going to work on, probably not this summer. I think I'm going to wait for the winter to work on it, when I kind of get quieter in my life, you know, and kind of hibernate. But because of the tech debacle of January when my computer crashed and we lost all those episodes and then we had to kind of pause the season, which we explained kind of behind the scenes, definitely more to our Patreon subscribers and also our email subscribers. So if you're not on those lists, get on those lists, even the free ones, just so you can kind of, you know, find out a little more of like why we disappear sometimes or what's going to happen next.
Shannon Betts:But anyway, because of that, that motivated me to definitely do a digital declutter, like this past year I've been like decluttering my whole house because we merged the bedroom. You know, we split the bedrooms and then like, move the master bedroom and did all kinds of different things and that just caused a lot of clutter as we moved the rooms. So I've been dealing with that all year and then now I've got to tackle the digital part and I have to have much better systems in place so that my backups are running and we don't lose any future episodes and also that I can, you know, find documents faster and they're not just in like the lost of the mace of my folders and things like that in the cloud. I mean it's just, it's a real mess and I think it's going to take me months to clean it up. I'm going to try to find some AI or tech tools, that kind of streamline that I would love to hear about any that listeners might know of, but that's going to be one of the personal goals for me.
Mary Saghaif:Nice. In line with that, I actually have tried this summer to utilize AI more. I actually have used it, like more recently, for building lesson plans and then explicitly working to you know kind of draw out some strategies that would be best practices for my students, so that I can then share those with parents a little bit more, rather than just conversation wise or sometimes I'll have parents come in and I'll model for them. But what I really want to do is make sure that it is documented, because if it's documented then we can share it more widely with others and parents have that same language and parents really want to be able to come into the school and speak the jargon that teachers often do, so that it's efficient and they are ensuring that they're speaking the same language, and that's often something that's intimidating, I think, for parents.
Mary Saghaif:So I've been using AI for that and I've also been using it for decodable passages, so I've been able to kind of change around some passages and one of the things that I thought was just great yesterday so I was doing a decodable passage and I was combining some themes and so it was mostly about soccer and it generated a story and I was able to change the names in the story to familiar and personalize. The story created a quick printout for me and I was able to use it and the student really benefited from it, and that's something that would take me a lot longer to do on my own, and so within a couple of minutes I was able to generate that. I do want to caution that as you go through it, you want to be really carefully reading through, because it is not a perfect system. So the 80-20 rule is really important. 80% of it should be right on target and then you likely will want to correct about 20% of it and make sure that you review, so don't just copy paste.
Mary Saghaif:Nope, yeah, oh. The other thing that's been helpful for me too is reviewing programs. So I often have a general outline of a program that we're talking about or a program that a school is using, but I can ask it to teach me a little bit about the main points of a program so that when I go into a school and learn about what the practices are looking like in the school, I can say this is going to be really important and strong in the lesson to support the needs of this learner. So that's been kind of helpful too.
Shannon Betts:Well, that is cool. So, like, like wonders, like you could say Like wonders, right, exactly what?
Mary Saghaif:does a wonders literacy block look like in a second grade classroom? Explain it to you know a parent of an eight-year-old or something like that? Cool yeah, definitely.
Shannon Betts:Well, I'm excited for next season too. We've already started this summer planning for next season. So we've got exciting things in store and we appreciate all of you just for sticking with us, especially when we're on like our big hiatus. And then I know, like what we've done since we kind of got back on air is that we've been releasing episodes really quickly and it's taking longer for teachers to kind of catch up with them because they're long episodes. They have a lot of meat to them. So hopefully, after this episode airs, you know, there'll be a couple months off where people get caught up. Get caught up and we're also check out our our website over the summer, because what we're also going to be releasing is um themed playlist that we curate for you guys. Um, because certain topics kind of keep coming up, um, and we want y'all to be able to see like how the episodes across the seasons are connected, and so we'll be adding those to our website and some other things to our website now that it's been redesigned.
Mary Saghaif:Yeah, no, I'm really looking forward to our next season eight, which is, you know, we're really moving along with this podcast. It's just so nice to have our listeners, you know, come back and join us. I think, too, we have some really great quality content, and it would be really wonderful if you could share this with a colleague or another thought partner and really discuss in your own teacher's lounge some of these themes and topics that we've discussed. We also would love for some teachers to reach out to us personally and chat with us a little bit. We may have some other opportunities in the next season for teachers to I'll just say it, not like you're teasing it, I'm just going to say it.
Shannon Betts:Okay, I'm just going to say it out loud we want real teachers to come into the Reading Teachers Out to join us. So we're still going to be having some expert guests, but we're also going to be having conversations, like we've had in our Patreon off air where we've had teachers join us on our Zooms and we talk about we just said Wonders.
Shannon Betts:You know how are you using the Wonders curriculum in your classroom or what are some non-negotiables that are going on in your district.
Shannon Betts:You know that feel like you're hemming in and how can we kind of help you see how that is part of best practices and kind of weave it into like what you already you know, have experience doing? And we're going to not call out any specific curriculum or anything like that. But we do want to talk about what are the real life demands that are happening in the field with teachers at different grade levels. So if any of you guys are interested, you can go ahead and email us about that at readingteacherslounge at gmailcom or team at readingteachersloungecom is our official email address, and then we're also on our social media and in our newsletter. So be following us there if you're not, and be a subscriber. If you're not yet, you can find out about that on our website and our social media handles are at Reading Teachers Lounge, you know, across the platforms. But anyway, we're going to be putting out a survey, you know, asking for signups for anybody who's interested to come in and be a Literacy Soul Sister with us.
Mary Saghaif:I think that this will definitely make a big difference in the lives of our teachers who are listening right now. I think it's always important to hear from lots of voices, and so I love hearing from our experts who come on, but I think that you know, in real life we need to hear what's happening in the classroom, so we're excited to share with our listeners those conversations.
Shannon Betts:One last thought about this season. We had a lot more dudes in the Ring Teacher's Lounge, so we had like literacy soul sisters and brothers. So I really liked that.
Mary Saghaif:That's true. Yes, we want to make sure that we're as inclusive as possible so great. I think that I've covered most of the points that I wanted to chat about today.
Shannon Betts:How about you? I think so. Let's give the gift of a shorter episode here at the end. Go find one of the other episodes that we've mentioned that you haven't listened to yet after you're done with this one.
Mary Saghaif:Thanks, for tuning in. Thanks for joining us. Have a great one.