8.6 AD FREE Deliberate Orthography Artwork

Reading Teachers Lounge

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

All Episodes

Reading Teachers Lounge

8.6 AD FREE Deliberate Orthography

Subscriber Episode • January 08, 2026 • Shannon Betts and Mary Saghafi • Season 8 • Episode 6

This episode is only available to subscribers.

MORE Reading Teachers Lounge

Subscribe and receive ad-free content and exclusive bonus episodes!

Shannon and Mary revisit the topic of Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) and discuss the importance of understanding the deliberate reasons for English spellings with guests Jennifer Petrich and Bradley Johnson.

The conversation follows the hosts' and guests' experiences with SWI, detailing how it helps students understand and apply the structure of English spelling with its focus on word structures, etymology, and morphology.

Emphasizing a shift from a phonics-only approach to one that also prioritizes morphological and etymological understanding, the episode highlights the importance of starting with word meaning and developing scientific inquiry skills in literacy teaching.

The journey into SWI is one of discovery, collaboration, and continuous learning. With the tools and strategies shared by Jennifer Petrich and Bradley Johnson, educators can confidently embark on this path, helping their students gain a deeper understanding of the rich tapestry that is the English language.

Join the conversation and dive into the world of Structured Word Inquiry. Whether you're an educator, a parent, or a lifelong learner, there’s always more to uncover in the fascinating study of words.

00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview
01:41 Introducing the Guests: Jennifer Petrich and Bradley Johnson
02:54 Jennifer's Journey with Dyslexia and SWI
05:39 Bradley's Path to Structured Word Inquiry
10:43 Explaining Structured Word Inquiry to Teachers
21:10 The Importance of Meaning and Morphology
31:51 Addressing Teacher Challenges with SWI
33:35 Implementing New Teaching Methods
34:24 Transparency in Learning
35:00 SWI in the Classroom
35:10 Using Scope and Sequence
38:38 Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge
40:45 Investigating English Spelling
42:52 Scientific Inquiry in Teaching
46:12 Morphological & Etymological Studies
50:37 Practical Applications & Community Support
53:28 Final Thoughts and Resources

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES RELEVANT TO THE EPISODE:

Ad Free 8.6 Deliberate Orthography w.Jennifer Petrich & Bradley Johnson -

Shannon Betts: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Reading Teachers Lounge. Mary and I actually have two guests with us today, and they're gonna introduce themselves in just a second. But I wanted to give a little background of what this episode's gonna be about. So in season seven, we did an introduction to Structured Word Inquiry with Dr. Pete Bowers. And this is gonna be a follow up episode because Mary and I over the last few months have had more experience working on this approach with our own tutoring students. And we wanna continue the conversation with some other practitioners that are using it in their own practice as well, and who we've also learned from through personal and online connections with.

And so we're calling this episode Deliberate Orthography, and I chose that title because that's been my big understanding through all this work, is we started this with. Doing a series of episodes about spelling, and it just sort of like blew my mind and realizing that, oh, there's a reason all these words are spelled this way.

Because I had that own [00:01:00] understanding of there's so many irregular words, English doesn't make sense. And I was continuing to share that with students. And so now I realize that it is deliberate orthographic choices that were made for the graphemes and words. And we, it's our responsibility to share that with students.

It's not just about the sound symbol correspondences between the words. And once we share that, it, it, they can really understand that structure of English so much better and apply it to so many more words that I'm seeing that in my students. How they're able to just read like just these huge families and word banks of words that just seemed so elusive just a few months ago.

So, anyway, really excited. That was a long intro, sorry. But really excited to have Jennifer Petrich. Am I saying it correctly? Bradley Johnson. Pete,

Jennifer Petrich: Pete Petrich. Yeah.

Shannon Betts: Petrich. Okay. Jennifer Petrich and Bradley Johnson. So Jennifer, why don't you introduce yourself first and we'll add that we are local Atlanta friends.

Jennifer Petrich: Yeah, we're building kinda a, [00:02:00] a quite a, a collection right of SWI enthusiasts in the Atlanta area, so, which reminds me I have to reschedule our dinner. So, so currently I'm a co-director of Literacy Doctor with my colleague there, Sara Lee. And we do one-on-one intervention with students looking at literacy and all different kinds of literacy challenges.

So for a long time it was just dyslexic students, but it's all different kinds of students that are struggling with reading and writing and grammar. And I also branch out into the math world. And so Brad also works with us doing the one-on-one with students. And then the, the three of us kind of.

Do different pieces of working with coaching and consulting and PD for teachers and schools. Anybody who's really interested in learning more about SWI and wanting to implement it with their students. And it has been quite the journey for me. So I've been interested in dyslexia for, because I have family members with [00:03:00] dyslexia.

So growing up, watching them struggle, realizing they're very smart, what is the deal? And then in college started working with students who have dyslexia and trying to kind of understand what is going on. And I, I worked with a a learning center in Baltimore, Maryland and started going, Hmm, everybody has this labeled dyslexia, but their brains are not the same.

They're not doing the same things. You know, it's like, what's going on here? So that got me really interested in the brain. So I went to grad school and got a PhD in neuroscience, did research for a while. Did some research on, visual processing in deaf signers. And from there that was a short time.

But from there I ended up into going into another lab that was a linguistics lab. And so it was studying cognitive neuroscience and linguistics, looking at deaf signers, hearing signers, and kind of opened a whole new world of, of reading and language for me and being really interested in, in how all of that was happening.

And then I [00:04:00] ended up deciding, I really did like working with students, so I went back to doing that at the dyslexia training center when in San Diego. And from there, that's where I got introduced to SWI. And I remember sitting in a workshop it was a weekend workshop and listening. To everything they were saying and realizing this was the confluence of so many pieces of my life because a lot of linguistics was, was involved.

And even understanding etymology, you have to know a lot about Latin and French, which I took both of those and I thought, oh my gosh, all these things are coming together. And then we'll talk probably a little bit more about this later, but it is a journey to get from, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I can't wait to do it and understand it to how do I do this with students, right?

And what do I do with all the things that I was doing when I was doing og? But from there ended up moving out here to Atlanta and starting Literacy Doctor, and, and I still love working one-on-one with the students, but now that more [00:05:00] and more people are learning about SWI and wanting to learn more about it and how to, you know, use that approach with their students, we're trying to.

Offer lots of different ways for people to enter the world, get their feet wet, start understanding what it is and what they need to know about it. And so that's why we still do a mix of working with students and doing the professional development.

Mary Saghafi: Bradley, I'm so excited to meet you and Jennifer, it's so lovely to see you again. 'cause we, our, our Atlanta paths have crossed as well. Bradley, tell us a little bit how you entered the world of SWI and, and let us know about your journey.

Bradley Johnson: Okay. I began as a classroom teacher years ago. And during my time in the classroom I spent most of the bulk of that time in urban environments.

Working with just the general classroom, but then was sort of I guess identified. To help people on a larger level. So first I became an a literacy coach, [00:06:00] and then later a professional development specialist for the district. And kind of my, there were two of us and my partner did more math things and I did more literacy things and my interest in literacy grew.

And I just became so interested in that, that I decided to pursue a curriculum position. And so I then became a curriculum director. I've been a curriculum director, an instructional coach, adjunct faculty, associate principal, dean of students. There's been so many roles that I've had in different schools, in both public and private settings.

And then in 2021, I was looking to kind of go off on my own. And so I actually, that's when I contacted Jen and said, Hey, let me pick your brain about some things about going off on your own. 'cause I know you went off on your own. And then she just mentioned, she said, Hey, I think we could collaborate on a few things and really do some, some awesome stuff.

And I agreed. [00:07:00] And so we've kind of been collaborating ever since. As she said earlier, I am tutoring students with literacy doctor. I also have my own business, one step now education. And through that business I consult with teachers and collaborate with companies like the literacy doctor to help teachers to understand literacy instruction and how to help their students be better readers and writers.

But as far as coming to SWI. That happened in an earlier curricular role. I had a group of teachers who had some older students who could read one syllable words just fine. But when it came to the Polysyllabic words, their students were really struggling to understand sation rules and things of that nature.

And I went off and I kind of did some research to help them out. And that's when I first came across SWI and Dr. Pete Bower's website. And I initially dismissed it because I thought it would be too difficult for my students. I thought it would be too challenging, etymology, all that kind of [00:08:00] stuff. But then I ended up in the same boat a few years later in a different school setting where I was a curriculum director. Again, same situation where teachers of the older students were coming to me saying, we have students who are really struggling with polysyllabic words. They can read one syllable words just fine.

And I went off again in pursuit of something and I learned more and more about morphology. And I started putting some morphology things together when I ran across the paper that Dr. Peter Bowers wrote with Kirby. And I read that paper again and I revisited his website. And this time I took a much closer look than I initially did.

And when I did, there was just something inside of me that clicked and said, there really is something logical to this that makes a lot of sense that I think some of our students would latch onto. And at that point I started incorporating more and more of it into, a program program and then we, I would go into classrooms and demonstrate lessons and so on and so forth.

And that's how I initially came to [00:09:00] structured word inquiry.

Mary Saghafi: I so appreciate that perspective of coming to SWI twice because I am also a, kind of got my feet wet. I understood it and then I went, Ooh, that seems like a lot. And I've already got a lot on my plate. And and I also, you know, went to Pete Bauer's website. I watched some webinars and I was really impressed and I thought, yes, this is fantastic.

I am not sure how to incorporate it currently into my practice. And I think another really strong. Piece for me was that I was teaching younger students and I did not have that connection piece that understands that actually morphology needs to begin with early learners. And so I missed that the first time around.

And so now getting my feet wet all over again that's something that I really want to share. And I think that there is this intimidation piece of how can we implement it. So [00:10:00] that's really our goal today, is really to share. You can do it. Here's your encouragement. Maybe this is your second time hearing about SWI, again, structured word inquiry is not it's not a piece that you should ignore.

It's something that you really need to start embracing. It's not something that you likely learned when you were younger, but it is really a critical element to ensuring that students are. Learning decoding as well as the spelling aspect that orthography, which is what we're talking about deliberate orthography today.

So I guess when you both and either one of you can answer this question, when you speak to teachers, how, how do you explain structured word inquiry? How do you explain this process to teachers?

Jennifer Petrich: So, it's funny 'cause many of us have talked about an elevator speech, right? How do you have an elevator speech for SWI?

And it reminds me a little bit of when you talk about og, not [00:11:00] everybody means the same thing when they say og. And same with SWI, right? So you kind of have to go, well, what, what exactly we're talking about? So, you know, SWI structured word inquiry, the, at the very base basic. Crux of it is an instructional approach with the four question framework, right?

So Pete Bowers has the four questions, that's kind of how you can analyze words and coming at them. Looking at the interrelationship between meaning, structure, history and sound, right? So thinking about semantics, morphology, etymology, and phonology. So and we can talk more if we want to about getting into the phonology piece, but it's kind of putting it in its place in the framework.

Because we really do wanna focus on morph morphology because that those pieces, the morphemes are the ones that are consistently spelled in English, right? Prioritizes the consistent [00:12:00] spelling of morphemes. So that, that part's really important to understand. And so there's the four question framework, and you can use that to investigate words and investigate the system.

And there's also a lot of content knowledge that comes with it, right? So I don't know whether everyone means that when they say doing SWI but I've heard lots of different, we were talking before about different terms, right? So there's orthographic linguistics and there was another term, I forget what it was that Sue Sue Hagland and mentioned, or Dr.

Rie mentioned in the talk that she did. And so

Shannon Betts: orthographic morphology,

Jennifer Petrich: that's what it was. Orthographic morphology, right? So so people are starting to come up with different ways. I, I think Brad and I like to talk about it as the framework, right? The framework and the approach and the content knowledge.

So what do you have to know about the system? And so the idea of looking at things this way is to help all of us understand how the writing system works. And like you said, we didn't. We didn't learn this in school, right? None of us learned this [00:13:00] when we were younger. And so a lot of us, you know, so for me it's a little bit over 10 years, but you know, I was in, well into my forties when I learned about this.

And so it's, it's really important that we understand it's a journey. That's why it's a journey, right? So understanding the process and the questions and, and the approach that takes a little bit of practice. And I think Pete Bowers explained that really well in his past episode that he did with you.

But learning all that information about the system, I mean, that takes a while. And I know for me, it's funny, you know, Brad was talking about coming to this work twice. So I got immersed in it over a weekend and was like, this is amazing. This is, I just have to figure out. But I remember at the end of that workshop, there were a lot of teachers in that room who were very frustrated because they left going, what do I do in my classroom?

How do I do this? Like it's sure it's great, but I don't know what to do. And so when I was still at DTI, my colleague and I, we were seeing students all the time. That was our full-time [00:14:00] job. And so we would collaborate and we would, and so we just started with sight words. We just kind of changed the way we looked at sight words with what we knew.

And then, you know, multi-syllabic words that have morph emmic structure and, and my, you know, visiting it twice is really not that I came and left and came back. It's more that I remember after the first couple of years going, okay. Now I get it. I see how Phonology fits into this. I see what I can let go from what I did before and how I'm gonna do things differently and now I get it right.

And then a few years later, I remember going, oh, I thought I got it anymore, but now I really get right. And then what you realize is there's just deeper and deeper levels of understanding. And so that's just a journey that you're on. And we can't, we can't just pick up something right away and start using it.

It's a journey and, but, but really it's a lens shift. That's what I like to call it. And so it's shifting your lens and understanding that we need to look at phenology [00:15:00] within the framework of semantics, morphology and etymology, and how they all interact. And like I said, that, you know, the spelling system prioritizes the, the spelling of morphemes, not phoniums.

So, you know, then there's learning about the tools. So what are the tools that you use in SWI? So you have to learn about matrices and word sums and the scientific method, right? So how are you going to use those tools? You're going to collect data, you're gonna make hypotheses, you're gonna test those hypotheses.

And if you get more data that doesn't go with what you thought was the, your understanding of the system, then maybe we have to, you know, update our understanding. So I say that a lot of times with what people call rules. There's a whole lot of rules that people throw around with English spelling, and some of 'em seem to kind of stay true and some don't.

But really what it is, if something is a rule, it is always going to work. And so if it's not, you have to [00:16:00] figure out, maybe you need to update your understanding of that rule. So it's, it's all of those pieces, which is kind of not always easy to get across to people. My elevator speech is always about, Hey, we, we prioritize the, the spelling of morphemes and I talk about Ed.

I think you could. That's the one thing you can bring that everybody already knows about. And so when you're talking about something that's past tense and it has an ed, your brain knows what that means. And it doesn't matter how it sounds. That's how we're gonna spell it. So, for example, sometimes people will use an SIGN sometimes people, the fam family for SIGN sign signature signal design.

Sometimes people will use a c action, a CT with an ION to talk about the ION. Those are all just little hooks to kind of grab people. But really it's, the lens shift is, okay, this is not just about sound. We have to understand all of these other pieces and how they fit together and prioritize the morphology piece.

'cause that's the piece that's consistent.

Shannon Betts: I'm in that scientific journey where I'm practicing all [00:17:00] this with my students and I've actually been doing a lot of, I've started with sight words as well. So I'm using the ULY curriculum, so I'm still doing a lot of phonics 'cause I'm working with an upper grade student who couldn't decode a single word, but I'm adding to the decoding piece that there's morphology we have to decode too.

Like for example, the subjects S is a code that might signal plural or it might signal subject verb agreement for a third person, singular subject, you know, or different things like that. And then also over the summer, the high frequency word project book came out and that's been really helpful because I've.

I'm following the scope and sequence for the sight words with the uly curriculum, but I'm pulling out and teaching sort of word families using that resource. So for example, when said and says, came in to the scope and sequence and in the decodables, then I could also talk about lay and laid [00:18:00] and pay and pays and paid and how all of those are words are related and how the spelling has to be consistent.

Well really then the ones that are inconsistent with pronunciation are says and said, but they're spelled this way for a reason. So I appreciate that how you kind of came to it from the same place. Bradley, did you wanna add anything to your elevator speech? That was a long elevator ride Jen.

Bradley Johnson: That's, that's what I was gonna say. I was gonna say a little bit of a longer elevator route. No, I think, I think she covered a kind of a lot of points quick, you know, that the fact that. English prioritizes more themes consistently is extremely important.

Shannon Betts: When I've been doing those I, I, I think I've started it more not from the inquiry based because some of my students are so beginner that I'm starting it more from a systematic, explicit sort of way.

But then we kind of get in investigations just because of the nature of the work, right? So I was so fascinated working with her that we were [00:19:00] doing she's an English language learner, a multilingual student, and so we're doing a lot of conjugation of verbs and things like that. 'cause, you know, she sort of needs some of that work as well in the grammar.

And so we were looking at, he and she. So then we were, look, I was like, well, might as well just put in they, 'cause that's coming up in the scope and sequence and that, you know, then I looked at she goes to a parochial school. So I was like, okay, you know how to spell pray, you know, like you pray in a church, well then there's pray like a predator prey.

Those are two different choices for the a sound. And why did, why did they choose the ey instead of the ey? And then we realized that she and he, and they and them and their all have the e in there for, for a reason to so that they're related. And it, it, so it, I'm learning along with the students. This is just, it's really fun work.

It's fun to incorporate. And I look forward to like continuing in this conversation and hearing from both of you of like [00:20:00] how teachers and tutors can incorporate this. The work that they're already doing. 'cause I had some struggle with, okay, well I still love my scope and sequence of phonics so much.

So how do I add that extra framework piece at the beginning, like Mary said was so important about showing that this morphology has to be included.

Mary Saghafi: I was gonna just add one more thing and I think that Shannon's point to you know, your example about prey is so great because. Where we can start, and correct me if I'm wrong, Bradley and Jennifer, is, it's so important to start with word meaning, and that's where I've kind of gained an and understood that I don't have to have a scope and sequence to weave this into my instruction.

So just as you found the word pray, you were able to kind of relate it to other related words and, and the spelling of words. Diving in that way is like the perfect entrance that I have sort of, sort of self discovered with our [00:21:00] students. So maybe you guys can touch a little bit more on, on how that works for you all and how you teach others.

Bradley Johnson: Yeah. About the importance of meaning. Yeah. I would, I would offer a lot of resources are, are, do say that it's speech written down and we know that's not 100% true because if it were. It would be far more transparent and we wouldn't have so many, you know, struggling readers. And so if you stop to think about it, the way something is spelled is to convey meaning.

And as Jen was saying earlier, because the morph themes make up the meaning of the words, then the spelling is gonna prioritize the consistent spelling of morphemes over the consistent spelling of phon ees. And the example I like to use for that is the base FINE. If you look at the word define [00:22:00] right, you have that long, I sound in define in the base.

But then you look at a word like definition, which also has the base FIME, and it sounds, the base sounds more like fun and not fine. And then you look at a, a third word in the same family definitive, and now you have a third pronunciation for that base Finn. So you have fine, fun, fin, but they're all spelled the same because it is the same morphine, FINE, the base, and we spell out the morphines because for that very reason, until it's situated within a word, it doesn't really have a pronunciation.

And the word define the base, F by E is fine, but in the word definition, the FINE base is fun with the e being replaced. And the same thing with definitive, then it's pronounced Finn again with the e being replaced. So a long time ago, right in the sixties and, and and seventies no, [00:23:00] and, and Carol Chomsky and the work of Richard Venesky, they explained English is morpho phonemic, right?

It's morpho phonemic that. And so we prioritize the consistent spelling of morphemes over phonemes. When you stop to think about it the reading is for the eyes. Not necessarily for the ears. Right. And that's why that I think that we do that we've that our English has evolved that way. The other thing that I think is really important when starting with meaning and morphology is that for a lot of the students that Jen and Sarah and I teach as well as I'm sure many of the students that are out there to the people listening in your classrooms or in your tutoring sessions, phone names are very abstract things, right?

Phonenemes are something that exist in our head. A lot of kids, when you think about the phones, 'cause there's a difference between phones and phone names, some of them can't hear the phones. Some of them have trouble distinguishing one phone from another to put it in that phoning category. And so [00:24:00] because those things, and even something larger like a syllable or an onset or a rhyme.

Can be very abstract for a lot of the students that we teach. And so, because if we start with meaning rather than starting with the phonology, then they have something to hang onto a little bit more. It serves as an anchor for them to be able to grasp onto. Because at the end of the day, if you don't actually know what the word means, you can learn how it's spelled and pronounced, but it's probably not gonna stick in your head.

It's not gonna get stored up there. So to be able to kind of get meaning from print I think you have to have a sense of what that word actually is before you can actually decode it, so to speak, and understand the, the, how it's pronounced and how it's spelled. So, and then, and then as far as etymology goes, I think a lot of people are really.

Kind of coming along with morphology and their understanding. Morphology. It's [00:25:00] getting a lot of press, so to speak these days. But etymology is also beginning to come along and etymology is what drives graphing choice. The choice of graphing in the word is based on etymology. A a good example that I use early on with students for that concept is a pH, right?

We know that a pH is often a sign that a word has a Greek origin, right? Not necessarily, but almost. It's, it's quite reliable. Also the y as a vowel that media y in words like type or gymnasium, those are also signs that those words are probably of a Greek origin. And so etymology drives the choice of graphemes that are used as well.

And if you are un and if you understand that. Then that can kind of help you with whether or not a word has a pH or is it gonna be an F or is it gonna be, you know, a y or is it gonna be an I because a, [00:26:00] y and an I share a lot of the same characteristics. So that, those are some of the reasons that I think it's important to start with meaning, especially if you're working with struggling readers who are, who are struggling.

It's ironic to me sometimes that the thing that we do with struggling readers who are struggling already with phonology is we give them more phonology. And that's not, you know, I don't think that's something that we probably will benefit from. I think that if we, you know, we want to go with strengths, and for a lot of them, they really latch onto the meaning.

We, we go out, we find pictures, well, what does this word mean? And what does this word mean in this instance versus in, in, in another situation? Because there are so many multiple meaning words as well, right? So that's also a place to start from. And if you can get them grounded in that there, to me, they're more willing to kind of come along for the rest of it.

Shannon Betts: Jennifer, I wanna hear your continued thoughts, and I also wanna hear how you [00:27:00] transitioned from an OG approach to this as a regular part of your practice.

Jennifer Petrich: So going along with the, you know, etymology, driving graphene choice, when you look at what you were saying before them and they, and there, right? So there often is difficult for kids to spell.

Probably partly a little bit because it's an ei. So it's a homophone. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, so it's a homophone. And so then you have there, there, there. And so a lot of times what do teachers do? They teach them, they're there, there together. And then there's all kinds of graphic pictures, little images, right?

They'll put little people, they'll put little arrows, they'll do different things to try and help kids. But really what you're doing is you're co encoding those three things together, which is not helpful if you put it in its family where it has a connection both in meaning and in spelling. Now you have this connection to something [00:28:00] that, you know, Brad was saying is more meaningful.

And you can even talk about, so I just did this yesterday with a student. We were talking about place value and we were talking about AI and a y, right? And so, you know, depending on what you've done with your student before, they may or may not know that I doesn't go at the end of, of English words, but words that are from English, but that the EY goes at the end.

And so I said there are other examples too, and this is one of those where when you understand it more deeply, you kind of see an overarching. Category. So for me, going, okay, wait, there's an EI and an ey, an ai and an ey and oi and an oi, right? So it's like this overarching theme. And so we looked at EI and EY and I showed them that they, they, and there, and how once you see that, it makes perfect sense, right?

And so not only that there's a place value piece so that the Y is the one at the end. 'cause Y doesn't go at the end. But also I and Y, right? I and y have a historical relationship and they can spell all of the same things in words as [00:29:00] far as pronunciation goes. So it's, that was, you know, something in the, in the sight word world, like I was saying in the beginning, just starting with sight words and going, how can I look at making these relationships and connecting things?

In a meaningful way instead of just focusing on, because what do you do when you're doing sight words and they're, you know, they don't play fair by phonics rules. A lot of times it's practice, it's reciting, it's tapping out the letters. It's right, it's not calling attention to the graphemes and what they're doing, but also the relationships and why these graphemes are chosen.

And the fact that, and even though there's an ey EI relationship, why is it EI and EY and not AI and ey, well, them has an E, right? So then that all makes sense. Once you understand that instead of just being something that's crazy or difficult, that has to be memorized. So I think that in the sight word world, and like you said before about say and says and said, right, so the, the question, what I realized after a while [00:30:00] was the question shouldn't be, because this is what a lot of people ask.

Why do we say it that way? The question really needs to be, why do we spell it that way? And you can start with. A word, a word family. You can look at a spelling and then dive into it with the four questions to understand that spelling. And it doesn't always have to be the four questions. You can make connections explicitly without doing that.

But I think it's, it's helpful in the beginning to do that a lot to kind of understand that piece. And so, you know, making sure that when you're approaching something from a, from this kind of lens, you're not looking at, okay, here is how we pronounce it, and then go from there. It's more like, this is this word, this is what it means.

Let's look at the spelling. And when we look at the spelling, we can look at the relatives and we can look at the pronunciation and we can learn all of these other pieces, but it's really starting with a word. And so I don't actually even have kids sound out things anymore. [00:31:00] We, when we look at a word, if they're struggling with it, I say, okay, this is this, well actually I have them spell it out first.

Often once a kid spells out. Two things. Either they figure out what the word is on their own, or I get a really good understanding of what they get about the structure of the word and what they don't understand about the structure of the word. But then I can say, that's that word. And then we can, that when we're, when we're not reading, we can dive into that word, understand its spelling.

So I think the goal is not that you're gonna explicitly teach every single word or word family to a kid, but in the process of doing this and understanding how the system works, their brain starts to understand how the system works. Their brain starts to see these pieces, these meaningful pieces in words, and starts to make connections.

Because ultimately the goal is to get to meaning directly from print, right? Not to have to go through pronunciation to get there.

Mary Saghafi: I think that sometimes and you know, when you all do your training, correct me if this is inconsistent, but it just feels like when [00:32:00] you're in the moment with your students and you see something and you start to explain, you know, let's give Shannon's example of say and said, and you get that way and then you start to dive a little deeper and you go, Ooh, I don't have the words yet to explain it as the teacher.

I think that's where there's this hiccup. So when teachers, you know, are diving into this and they have this hiccup, what is your advice to get them to move to the next part with their students?

Shannon Betts: And the hiccup would be like, why is the word spelled this way? Like, if we don't have the answer to that.

Mary Saghafi: Yeah, I think so. Or, or where do I go next? Can I think of another word that would be related to this? How can it, something along, along those lines. 'cause that's how I felt at first when I was, I was going through this and I understand the word pieces and the vocabulary that we're talking about, but sometimes if I start to go too deep with students on saying the, you know, this phon has this, and then the phoniums gonna change, and the [00:33:00] morph, folic, morphological element here, you know, is going to break off.

And this is why they tend to get overwhelmed with the, for lack of a better word, the jargon of. You know, this greater concept where we really want them to identify the base word. We really want them to see how the word can shift in pronunciation, but it still has the same element, you know, from the base.

So I guess, I guess that's it. When teachers come to you, what are some of these little hiccups and how do you sort of guide them through, you know, kind of just pushing forward? Are they following the, the four step questions? What, what comes next?

Jennifer Petrich: I think it kind of depends on how they're doing this. I mean, if we're talking about classroom teachers, right?

How are they implementing this? And so I know that when Pete Bowers talks about it, it's kind of like the more you know, the more you can kind of use [00:34:00] it in your classroom with your students. So in the beginning, and it's funny 'cause thinking about, this is a little bit of a tangent, but thinking about lens shifts.

When I was take, when I was learning about a different lens shift in terms of parenting, the very first time I went to implement it, I actually said to my kid, Hey, I'm learning about something new. Are you okay if we try it? And she was, and we did it and it worked great. So I think just being totally transparent about what we're doing, because everybody, I mean, this is one thing I remember Neil deGrasse Tyson saying that the culture of you get to graduation, especially high school graduation, and everybody throws their you know, their hats in the air and a lot of kids are like tossing all of their notes and Right.

It's this whole big thing. It's like that's the end of learning. But really we wanna be lifelong learners and we want our kids to be lifelong learners. And so we can model that by saying, Hey, I'm learning something new. [00:35:00] Can we do this? And now that would be, you know, you took a class or you heard about SWI, you're just starting, you wanna try it in your classroom.

And so you just say, can we try this? And you know, you do it. I think if you need more structure, I know that Pete has also said if you need a scope and sequence, just take the one you already have and start then diving into places where you've learned more or something that's accurate, where your scope and sequence is not accurate.

So that's another way to kind of start getting involved. And most teachers, what they'll say is, I mean, I think as a teacher you're kind of used to just knowing what the answer is all the time. So it's a little scary to not know. It's okay to say, you know what, I'm gonna have to ask my word nerd friends, or I'm gonna have to ask my SWI community, or I'm gonna have to go to a drop in and ask.

Right? So that's what a lot of people I think do, because that's what you want the kids to do when they don't know, you want them to kind of go to their friends, Hey, what do you think about this word? Or What do you think about this hypothesis? [00:36:00] And so sharing it with the community and, and being lifelong learners if you have something more structured.

So there are some more materials which we can kind of go into detail later, but you could use some materials that are out there. We also have curricular modules, and this is one of the reasons why we started developing them, because it is difficult when you have no structure to it to just start trying.

I think if that's a little bit scary, it might be helpful to have these things already laid out in terms of, this is the concept we're gonna cover and these are the words you can use to cover it. That's also kind of, I mean, we're getting into the book already, but kind of what we wanted to do there too, right?

So we curate a list of words or you know, have you even developed a, a group of, of words to look at to try and understand what is going on here? You know, get your data, develop your hypothesis, test it, update it if you need to, that whole thing. And so you wanna kind of get all of that going in your classroom.

So if you have [00:37:00] some of that structure for you already then you don't have to worry about that piece. But it's okay. I think that's the biggest thing is it's okay. Not every, I mean, when you're introducing matrices and word sums. So many people think those are so cool, and they are, and they're the tools because that's how you can verify your hypothesis.

And it's a really good way to visually represent the things that you're studying in the word family.

Shannon Betts: Well, the related question I wanna ask is, and I'm, I have used some of the lessons in your book is I'm thinking what a teacher could do is, let's say like in their scope and sequence in the curriculum they're supposed to use they're supposed to, in the spelling set or in the phonics set for that week, they're supposed to focus on the doubling convention or whatever.

Instead of [00:38:00] starting it on Monday and saying, we are gonna learn this rule, you could give 'em that word set. Then have the students come to it from a question inquiry base and say, well, what do all these words have in common? What is happening with these words? Why did they change what's going on with this?

And then have the students kind of come up with that lesson themselves rather than starting it from the onset.

Bradley Johnson: It's, yeah. And I'm gonna, I mean, we'll go ahead. From that point, I would, yeah, I would totally agree with you that that's the way that I think we approach a lot of this work is, is to kind of do that and why we developed the book.

We wrote a book, Jen and I did, investigating English spelling so that you could, you know so the teachers could start to get some of this content knowledge. To me, to me it's like, I always kind of say it's a three-legged stool. There's the content knowledge, and then there's the pedagogical content knowledge, which I'll go into in a moment.

And [00:39:00] then on that third, like there's kind of the, the. The practice with students and getting to know your students and having that reflective practice with them. So what Jen and I were experiencing were lots of students. Literacy doctor has a drop in on Wednesday nights at 8:00 PM Eastern, and people were coming to the drop-ins or people were emailing us, or where people were telling us on social media that they had all this great content knowledge, but they weren't quite sure what to do with it.

And as Jen and I were talking, we decided to kind of. Put together a course that would help with some of that, what to do with it, which would be the pedagogical content knowledge. Like I know how to teach now. I know all this great stuff about morphology and etymology and how graph themes work and all of that, and how do I put that together into a teaching practice, right?

And so at first we developed the course, and the course is called Connecting the Dots, DOTS, integrating [00:40:00] Scientific Word Study into Your Practice. And as we were teaching that course, we found that people were coming with different levels of content knowledge. And so we'd started to develop some materials to give people in the course to help kind of get everybody's content knowledge, hopefully to the same sort of level so that we have a commonplace to speak from in the course.

So we did that first and then later we decided to kind of take that. Develop it into something for somebody who's completely new to the topic of structured word inquiry and scientific word study, ortho, graphic linguistics, whatever you're calling it. And so the book became content knowledge to kind of be ready for the course, which was pedagogical content knowledge.

So the investigating English spelling. In that book, we took what we call five Big ideas. So for the dots course, we developed 10 big ideas and we call it a big idea. You're probably gonna hear me use [00:41:00] this term a few times because we think these 10 ideas, ideas are gonna give you the most bang for your buck.

If you go with these 10 ideas, I would offer, you probably can develop a really solid classroom curriculum or. Or tutoring practice. Even if you just focused on these 10 ideas and if you could focus on that and not worry about some of these isolated concepts that you hear about in courses or workshops or, or things like that, then it would give you kind of a lens.

I think Jen and Sara at Literacy Doctor and myself at one Step now, we kind of believe that we're not here to overwhelm you. We're here to help you actually hopefully save time and to focus the time that you spend. So we think that these ideas are the, the foundational ideas. They're gonna be the most generative.

You're gonna run across them the most often. They're the ones who come up that come up over and over and over again. And in the first book, the ideas are the homophone principle function and content words, [00:42:00] the suffix in conventions you've already mentioned, you know, doubling. There's toggling I to Y and replacing the E.

Those are the three suffix in conventions. Talking about morphological and etymological relatives and how they can help us with spelling. Mm-hmm. And then Jen mentioned earlier, place value, which in terms of word study is that certain graphenes don't appear in certain places in basis or words.

Right? You don't see an AI at the end of a word. Instead, we use the ay at the end of the word. So that's what place value means. And those are the, those are five big concepts that we think come over, come up over and over and over again, that we really want them to be solid on those. Now our next sneak peek our next five big ideas will, we're kind of working on that book now, so hopefully in the future there will be a book on the next five.

But like Jen said earlier, it, we take you through that scientific process. It's exactly as you said, Shannon. We [00:43:00] start out with a data set of words. Then we develop your thinking as you're going through. The workbook is an interactive guide, so there's spaces to write in and to annotate and to circle and underline so that you are working through it.

Each investigation starts with a kind of a self check of what is your comfort level. First. Right.

Shannon Betts: It's like you as the teacher are like the student.

Bradley Johnson: Exactly. Right.

Shannon Betts: And so then you could replicate it in your classroom.

Bradley Johnson: Exactly. You could probably in the process heard that, like you just said, I've heard from several people now that they've actually, that was not the original intent, but that people have actually taken some of these and used them with the students.

Because it is a, it's the same data set for you to learn that content as it would be for the students to learn that content. And a lot of this, a lot of people are always looking for the research, but the research that we're doing with students is the, is the actual orthographic system itself. We're looking at the words.

We're not relying on rules that somebody came up with. We're hoping to generate that rule on our own or to, [00:44:00] sometimes you have to focus a little bit more with certain students or with,

Shannon Betts: or prove, disprove the rule. Proven dis you've come with all of

Bradley Johnson: this scientific stuff. Right. That you know, so it begins asking you.

How comfortable are you with the Homophone principle? All the way from, I don't even know what you're talking about, up to, I feel pretty comfortable. I think I could teach a lesson on the homophone principle to my students next week. And then once you do that, then we take you through gathering your data set, formulating a hypothesis, proving or disproving the hypothesis, modifying your hypothesis.

Because sometimes it just, those, those rules that we all learned in school for phonics just requires a, a little tweak sometimes. You know, for example, I know I have, I, we often say that we don't like in English to end words with I or J or U or V. And then inevitably someone will come up to you with an exception.

But if we tweak that role, if we modify that [00:45:00] hypothesis to say no complete English content, word ends in IJU or V. Then we have something that's a little more usable. Because when people come up to you and say, well, what about the word flu, FLU? Well, flu is actually a clip, so it's not a complete word of the complete word I influenza.

And that's why the U is somewhat acceptable. So sometimes modifying the hypothesis is also important. And then at the end we do another self check of, now that you've been through this investigation, what is your comfort level with the homophone principle or content function words or the suffix conventions or place value.

So that's kind of how we and why we put the book together was at first as a companion to the course. But then we decided later that really we rewrote. I would say, I don't know, Jen, about half the book. I mean, it's the same book, but it's, it, we rewrote the book to be more explicit for people who were brand new to this work versus the people [00:46:00] that were coming to the DOT scores.

Had a, had a, some foundation, might've taken a class before or had some idea. I don't know. Jen, did you wanna add to that? Yeah,

Jennifer Petrich: I was gonna say, there's also two interludes. They're not investigations, it's just information that's helpful to know. So one of them is about morphological elements and kind of the system, what are the morphological elements and how do we put them together?

And then one of them is about the history of the English language. I think that's really helpful to understand, especially when you're looking at mm-hmm. The, you know, sometimes the explanation for why a, a word is spelled the way it's spelled has to do with when it came into English Right. Or where it came from.

And and I wanted to go back to one thing. You know, you said, Shannon, you brought in prove or disprove. And I've always said, for science, you can disprove. You don't usually prove, you usually have evidence that supports your hypothesis. And I think that's actually important with spelling because there are all kinds of things that we think we know until we find new evidence, right?

Mm-hmm. And so we, I think Brad and I probably both could, could name a few [00:47:00] examples. I know for me, one of them was that ng was a die graph. And the journey of, of kind of understanding, updating my understanding to, oh, wait a minute, the n is a, is a graphene and the G is a graphene. And how I came to that.

But again, it's not something that I can just turn around and then say, Hey, did you know Nng is not a digraph, it's an N and a G. If you do that to somebody who's not ready for it, right, it's they're, they're gonna be adopting your understanding and not have their own. But I think it's helpful to know that.

Everything, you know, can, our understanding just evolves and changes over time with more information. That's just how science works. So when we are doing science, it's good to know that, that all of our understandings could change, right? It just depends on what kind of evidence we get. So I think that's a really thing, important thing to keep in mind.

Shannon Betts: I was, when Bradley was explaining the, the scientific method and all of that, I was realizing that's actually what I did with that student that I was describing earlier. The one I'm using, [00:48:00] UFLI and the, the high frequency words with it's like teaching a blank slate, a vacuum because the student is so old and has such little skills.

So it's, it's fascinating to kind of watch what happens when I'm implementing all this stuff. But early on in the UFLI curriculum, they have the s suffix because I mean, it comes up in like the second or third decodable that they have. And so we took all of the words from those sentences and we sorted them based on is it, is it indicating a plural or is it indicating, you know, the other.

The, you know, the subject verb agreement, and I told you we'd already conjugated some verbs and things like that. We have this like three by two chart with like first person, second person, third person, singular and plural. Well, what we realized in that data set is that we kind of had her formulate like the hypothesis of what does this s mean?

And we realized it meant the two [00:49:00] things, either more than signaling more than one, or it meant there was a singular third person not in the room, you know, person doing the action. And then we went back to our little charts with the verb conversations and we realized that is, has, and was, I'll have that s as well for the third person singular.

And so then once she realized that she stopped spelling them with a z. Which was really cool. So I didn't realize that, that I was actually, I thought I was only doing the explicit instruction and so what, when Bradley was explaining that, I was like, oh, actually, when we took those words out of the stories and we're sorting them and matching the rules to it and everything, that was that scientific inquiry piece of it.

And this is, I mean, this is, UFLI lesson eight, you know, this is like the very first or second decodable at the very beginning of, they haven't even learned all the phon names for even the short vowels yet. And we could already start talking about, oh, was the s [00:50:00] representing the, or the, in different words and things like that.

So it's not always gonna be a direct, you know. Its phony situation and things like that. And so hopefully with this student, I am setting the stage for that meaning is the driver of this spelling. But I appreciate also what you just said, Jennifer, that I, I'm gonna keep needing to go back to the hypothesis to have the student double check and prove or disprove are they supporting it?

This new set of words that we've learned about these new things that we're learning about the phonics. Is it supporting what we already learned or not?

Bradley Johnson: And I think one of, one of, sorry, Jen, one of the important things also that I, I wanna make sure doesn't go by that you just mentioned is you pulled that data set from something the student was reading.

And I know for us, we think it's very important. That, that a lot of stuff that they see it plugged back into the reading or plugged into something that they're [00:51:00] writing. Because I see a lot of phonics. As a former administrator, I saw a lot of phonics lessons that were completely divorced from reading and writing.

They were all word lists and, and, and word sets and things of that nature. And certainly you could do that. And there are times that we do that in this work, but almost always we try to pull it from something that they're reading or something that they're writing. And more importantly, at the end, after the investigation, we try to plug it back in.

So I'm sure with that data set, once that student was also looking at that decodable again, where it was back in context, it was easier to recognize those words.

Shannon Betts: And I'm talking about the cat sit, or the cat sit.

Bradley Johnson: Sit, right.

Shannon Betts: You can do it from that level, right?

Bradley Johnson: Yes. That's looking at both s's and it's gonna be an S no matter what, no matter how it sounds.

Right.

Jennifer Petrich: And, and I was thinking, you know, it, we, we've seen so much awareness about how to, how [00:52:00] important morphology is, how to include it in your instruction. And, and in another podcast we did, I talked about etymology as kind of like the redheaded step trial that people still don't know what to do with it.

This is a really interesting place to look at. You know, you said the is and the was because, and the has you know, etymology is really the only thing you can kind of talk about there because morphology is what is, you know, there's when you can't do a, a tidy little what I was thinking about the tools when you can't do a tidy little word sum or make a cool matrix, right?

Those are awesome and they're very important tools, but sometimes that's not what you're looking at. And so this is why the etymology piece is so important. 'cause there's a lot that you can learn about the language and the words and how they're related to each other and why it's spelled the way it's spelled.

If you're looking just at that, right? There is no, there are no affixes, there is no structure. It's just these words, but there's still a relationship between them. [00:53:00]

Mary Saghafi: This is enlightening. And I think that the, all these pieces are just so helpful because it's true that like, it doesn't have to have you know, the tidiest bow either.

It's, it's a p it's an instructional strategy that you're using as part of the way that you're teaching students to have natural curiosity about the words and, and kind of pursuing that and weaving that throughout your classroom culture. Right? So I think that that is, is critical. In our show notes, we wanted to let our listeners know that we'll link to your website, the Literacy Doctor, we'll make sure that we have your book and courses also linked to if we have people who would like to do deeper dives what other resources can you recommend or, or how else can we, you know, promote structured word inquiry.

Jennifer Petrich: So we, as Brad mentioned, we have a, a drop in on Wednesdays at 8:00 PM Eastern Pete has a drop in on Mondays at five [00:54:00] Eastern. I think those are really nice ways to get started because, you know, it's whenever you can drop in, you drop in it's free and you can learn a little bit as you go whenever you can join them.

If you know some about SWI and you want to learn a little bit more, I think there's, there's lots of classes and there's lots of books I think I have on or we literature. Doctor has a resource, a list of resources that I can give you the link for so people can go there. If you really wanna dive into, you know, Sue Haglund's book, I think is a really foundational book for people.

Be, Pete has the book Beneath the Surface of

Shannon Betts: Words, right?

Jennifer Petrich: Yes. Beneath the, sorry, beneath the Surface of Words. Pete has that book. How Howler No, I can't remember what it's called now. I haven't looked at it in a while, but it's lessons to do with the, with the students. So, you know, and like I mentioned, we have curricular modules and there's so many resources out there, but I think just really getting started with the, the lens shift and once you [00:55:00] get the idea of how to investigate a word, start doing it right, whether you're just doing it yourself with our book, or whether you're doing it with a one-on-one student or you're doing it with one class.

I used to go in my son's fifth grade classroom because the teacher was talking to me, I guess she sent home words and I said, huh, this is fifth grade. And they have a spelling list. Usually they, they didn't have spelling list before and she said, well, I've realized there's a lot of basic words that some of them don't know.

So we talked and I said, what if I make the spelling list for you? And so sometimes that's just a simple way to get started. Do a word family for your spelling list. Right. So then

Shannon Betts: and when you say word family, you're not meaning cat hat bat.

Jennifer Petrich: Exactly right. Sorry. A morphological family.

Shannon Betts: So like play playground.

Jennifer Petrich: Yeah. So we would go in, I would, I would have usually two families, five words in each family. I would go in on Mondays or Tuesdays. We would look at them and I would do it the way we were just talking about. I would put things [00:56:00] up there. I would ask the kids what they notice, and we would kind of talk through what do we think is going on?

What, right. So then we learned about the morphological structure and we learned about word sums and we learned how to put them in a matrix. And we learned all of that stuff as we went along and they were getting exposure to all of these words. So even just a little tweak like that is, is a really nice way to start doing that.

Shannon Betts: And y'all were analyzing the phonology when y'all were. Investigating those words as well, correct?

Jennifer Petrich: Yes. There's all kinds of things, and this is why the content knowledge is so important. There are so many different directions you can go with a single word or a single word family if you know the content, right?

So that's why, whether it's part of your spelling instruction and you have structure and you have a scope and sequence that you're following, or whether it's a content like a content subject like science or social studies it, you know, if you, if you have the content knowledge, you can bring that to whatever you're doing, which is why it's so [00:57:00] important.

And I, you know, multiple people in the community talk about how teacher knowledge is so important. So I know it can feel overwhelming. Oh my gosh, there's so much knowledge for me to, but that's part of why we made the book. It's a simple way to get started. It walks you through the process you, like you said, you're the student and you're learning these concepts that you can take to your students.

And you're also learning the knowledge because you're actually doing the work in the book.

Mary Saghafi: I will throw another pointer out there. And that is find a teacher friend to do this with because doing it alone can feel a bit isolating or it, you know, but having an accountability partner, when Shannon and I are able to kind of talk through situations or you know, just, just have somebody else that you can practice language with, it makes you a lot more confident and comfortable just as our students are when, when they're able to pair up with somebody else.

So don't hesitate to, you know, find an accountability partner.

Shannon Betts: And there's a lot of good ones on Facebook as well. I'm in a [00:58:00] number of SWI Facebook groups that it's very helpful to go in there and say, is this a base or not? What's the deal with this word help?

Jennifer Petrich: Yeah. And I always say, don't, don't practice in a vacuum.

Same idea, right? So find a community. That's one thing we like to do with the Dots class is it creates a cohort. So you have a community. I went to Wolf Island this past summer to Pete's conference that he has up there, that they've created a WhatsApp. They, you know, there's a community. Once you have that sense of community, then it's people that you can study with.

So I do think that that piece is, is really important to have that community to do it with.

Mary Saghafi: While we still have you, what else would you like to share with our community or any, any last kind of bits of wisdom?

Bradley Johnson: I, I think I think when you are looking at this, I know we talked about it a little earlier, but.

But being comfortable with uncertainty is part of this work, unfortunately, because there are times, even now with all that I know where I run [00:59:00] into a dead end or I'm not sure, or I'm not, and there, there, yes, there's the community. You know, I think Jen, just the other day I was asking Jen, how would you do this certain word, I can't remember what the word was, and, and how would you look at that?

And when we were talking about that, we both kind of came up with it could be one or it could be the other. And, and that's that. And you have to learn to kind of live with those kind of uncomfortable questions. Again, I think sometimes it's, like I said, if you have that community that sometimes help, I have an online subscription community that I know that.

That's gonna be on, in the literacy doctor resources called CEO, creating English orthographer if people want to join that. That's also a place. I also have a free newsletter where I investigate a word using the four questions. It comes out every Friday. I, it used to be on social media. It's not on social media anymore.

It's a newsletter. So if people wanna sign up, they can sign up at newsletter dot [01:00:00] ONEstep now education.com. That's also on there as a way, but I think through that newsletter, you learn more content knowledge, right? You learn more of the content knowledge and the more of the content knowledge, you know.

The freer that you feel to go, because at the end of the newsletter then I give like two or three ideas on, well, where can you take the concepts that you learned while investigating this word? And then that can kind of jumpstart you for the next investigation or the next data set, or the next set of words.

So I think it's just a matter of becoming comfortable with uncertainty, which isn't easy. Most of us went into schools in teaching because we like knowing the answer and accuracy and all of that.

Shannon Betts: Well, and you were an administrator. Yes. And I think that some of my former administrators that I had would've been, I would've been well, I wouldn't have been celebrated.

Okay. I might've had some punitive damage if, if the, if they had not seen that my lesson flow had matched my lesson plan. Or if I'd seemed when I was teaching in front of the students that there was a moment of uncertainty.

Bradley Johnson: Right, right. [01:01:00] And it's scary to learn. It's okay to learn alongside the students.

It's fun when we discover things together. I think Jen would agree there.

Jennifer Petrich: They they actually love that. I mean, I've definitely had students in, in a one-on-one setting where the fact that they have taught me something, right? Yeah. Or that they've brought me to an understanding that I didn't have. I had one of those recently and it was just kind of mind blowing.

And that was very fun for them because, you know, every, everybody can learn. We always want to keep learning. And it, and that's the other thing I like about this, is it kind of it kind of level the playing field a little bit. When you're doing a classroom group it doesn't matter where you are in your ability to read.

We can all study the words together.

Shannon Betts: And

Jennifer Petrich: occasionally I'll have a situation like a classroom that I taught that I would come in once a week. I would zoom in, in Austin. They were third graders and there were a couple kids who had some pullout [01:02:00] intervention. But I wanted it, it's funny 'cause a lot of times the pullout happens during ELA and I specifically told them I wanted those kids to stay in the class when we did it.

And we did all kinds of things. We used to, a, a big fun thing that people like to do in a group is everybody has a whiteboard and they become word sums, things like that. The kids really like that. Mm-hmm. But when we would discover something occasionally there would be, you know, I would say it was a Catton convention or it was something about, you know, FLS and Z kind of stuff.

The kids who had the intervention, they already knew that. And so they could answer some of those questions. 'cause the other kids hadn't explicitly done that. They knew it maybe, but they didn't know it explicitly. And so it's nice to do something that kind of includes everyone. And allows everyone to kind of take part in the process together.

Bradley Johnson: And yeah, I think some, some students just really latch onto this and it's not always the students that you think would latch onto it. I think when I first started experimenting with this and I was going into classrooms and, [01:03:00] and kind of modeling these lessons, I think there were several students and teachers who came up to me and said, did you notice that so and so in the back perked their ears up for the first time in months?

You know, or, or something like that because they became interested. So I know that Jen and I have lots and lots of stories that we can share about students who were formerly turned off that have been turned on. Or we're not curious about words, and then all of a sudden they're coming up to you and saying stuff about words, and you're like, oh, okay.

That's, that's different. That's interesting. That's kind of when you know, right? Things have turned a corner and hopefully that's something that they can propagate even when they're not with you anymore in your classroom or in your tutoring sessions. And they're, they become independent noticers of great things about words.

Shannon Betts: I don't want a gender stereotype, but I have noticed a lot of the male students who were not as engaged really latch onto this, this approach. And maybe it's something about that they just, they kind of that engineering sort of mindset and they really love like the structure of it. Anyway, I've noticed that, and then my female students have been [01:04:00] a little bit more reluctant.

But this summer I did the Marie Foley Visuals course with it and oh my goodness, they now love doing the visuals with,

Jennifer Petrich: well, that's a way to anchor the meaning, right? That is one really important piece about adding the visuals depending on the students that you're working with.

Shannon Betts: For sure. Yeah.

You can make it, you can make this multisensory too, and it needs to be. Yeah. We, we really appreciate y'all sharing your time and expertise. I wish we could keep talking, but I know we need to.

Bradley Johnson: Thank you.

Shannon Betts: Yeah, we need to Sure thing.

Mary Saghafi: Well, we'll make sure that we have many links in our show notes. So we've mentioned lots of great resources throughout this episode, so we'll be sure to, to link to you and I'm sure that our listeners will be able to reach out to you if they have further questions.

Thank you again for joining us. We appreciate your time. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Bradley Johnson: It was fun.

Mary Saghafi: Thank you.