Summary Leaders & Learning in Literacy: Structured Literacy with Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling - YouTube (Youtube) www.youtube.com
6,127 words - YouTube video - View YouTube video
Dr. Pam Ka Hello and welcome. This is Patents, leaders and learning in Literacy podcast series. And my name is Dr. Pam Ka. I have the honor of serving as Pat and state consultant for Literacy.
Dr. Pam Ka In this podcast series, we interview literacy experts in the field, gain from their vast knowledge and then use this to align to best practices in the field. Today, we have the honor of welcoming dr. Luis Spear-Swerling to the podcast. I'd like to read a brief file about dr Spear-Swerling. Luis Spear-Swerling is professor owing say that again Louis.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling America. That's
Dr. Pam Ka for Em america, a special education at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, Connecticut. Her primary research interests involve children's that are literacy development across the K to 12 great span, common types of literacy difficulties, including d and teacher's knowledge base in preparation for teaching reading. Her latest book, which I have read nausea, It's absolutely wonderful. Many, many times. I've read this.
Dr. Pam Ka And Louise also presented at our Mt form about this book. The power of R rti or art... We call it Rt rti in Pennsylvania, the power of R rti and reading profiles, the a blueprint for solving reading problems by Brooks. Currently, she serves on the editorial boards of reading psychology, teaching exceptional children and anna of D flex. Dr Sp Policy work has involved several key educational initiatives, in Connecticut.
Dr. Pam Ka These included drafting the state's guidelines for multi tiered systems of support, Mt as well as its revisions of guidelines on identification in of learning disabilities. In addition, you served on the working group for the international D sexy association that produced the knowledge and practice standards for teachers of reading. Doctor Spear-Swerling has prepared both general and special educators to teach literacy as well as math for many years and she can solve regularly for Connecticut school districts, mostly on cases involving students with severe or persistent literacy difficulties. Thank you, Louise we're so excited to have you here today
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling my pleasure.
Dr. Pam Ka The reason... Well of course, I could have invited you for many reasons I was what a depth of of a career and how much you have contributed to the field, and thank you for that. But you recently released an article on the... For t teachers of exceptional children, It came out and print 01/02/2019. That's volume 51, issue 3, we...
Dr. Pam Ka Which you gonna also be accessed on reading rocket. But this article is titled structured literacy, and typical literacy practices, understanding differences to create instructional opportunities. And I... When I reached out to you was just because the article to me was just so very comprehensive I love the way that you use the vi of a typical teacher with a student with d sexy in their classroom. And then also how you woven in the definitions of structured literacy and typical literacy and compare those and are very comprehensive, but...
Dr. Pam Ka Accessible way. So I'm excited to talk to you about this article and hopefully bring more people's attention to this article because it's it's so well done and I think it can have a very big impact on the field.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Thank you. It's great to be here.
Dr. Pam Ka Yeah. Thank you. So we're gonna start out as the... Article pretty much does. Talking about this teacher name Isabel Rowe.
Dr. Pam Ka She is a special educator, and she's about to have article student who is now in third grade who's been diagnosed with D. So can you tell us a little bit about this scenario and then we'll begin talking to about defining structured literacy.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Right. Okay. So in this scenario, this row is trying to prepare for working with Curtis about a child with d lexi, so she reviews this file. And she also reads information about the d. And the point is made that, you know, she had generally good teacher preparation and it wasn't as though had never heard of d.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling But she's a relatively new teacher and she doesn't have a lot of experience with this... He disability yet. And also she... While she had some information, she didn't have extensive information, which I think is realistic for what many teachers have even many special educators, So in the course of researching d ce, she comes across this term structured literacy. And decides, she needs to find out more about it.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And she also notices that Curtis file, she somewhat puzzled that even though her school district uses to multi tiered systems of support that Curtis wasn't identified berlin leader. So the the Vi is sort of a vehicle for talking about structured literacy as compared to typical literacy practices not only in terms of instruction, but also in terms of assessment, which sort of eventually explains why Curtis wasn't identified.
Dr. Pam Ka Yes. And I and we were talking a bit before this launched, how important it is for regular teachers too. Our regular teachers are absolutely in the same place. I speak from my own experience, I did not learn the science of reading when I was in the classroom, I learned it. To letters.
Dr. Pam Ka And so it's a it's a journey I think that many teachers take. And so that's why I think that's been yet is so as you said, it's very authentic. Many teachers find themselves. And this same place where they have students with d sex or students with very, you know, challenging reading difficulties and yet, they just don't know where to go.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Right. Right. And when you think about it, you know, even by the most conservative estimates of incidence of d. It's maybe 5 percent of all children. Well, that's 1 in 20.
Dr. Pam Ka That's right.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And that means if you're a general led teacher, you're very likely to have at least 1 child like this in your class year after year after year.
Dr. Pam Ka Yes. Yep. Yep.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling It's really important. To, you know, to know something about how to teach the children effective.
Dr. Pam Ka Yes. And so can you tell us a little bit about almost like define structured literacy I think sometimes there's a lot of what we do do that. The, you know, that we're doing structurally literacy, but there are the doo do. We call that. But there are definite components for structured literacy.
Dr. Pam Ka Would you mind defining structured literacy and typical literacy?
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Sure. So a structured literacy approaches have certain key features. It... They're not just, you know, 1 particular commercial program or 1 particular methodology, but there are certain features that really are kind of essential features, So 1 essential feature of structured Literacy is highly explicit and systematic teaching where the instruction. Attends to important prerequisite skills.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Mh. So you know, we're not going to expect children to read words like author and illustrator if they cannot yet recap or example. If we're if we want children to be able to spell words with common suffix is, like Ed, and I ing. We don't expect them to spell those words when they can't spell the base word. So no.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Spectrum to spell thin if they can't spell thin.
Dr. Pam Ka That's right. Yeah.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And in typical literacy practices, often the instruction is not highly. Explicit. This is 1 of the big things you mentioned as, you know, we do do. Yeah. Really, if you observe, there's not a highly explicit the teacher modeling, explaining, guiding children through multiple examples.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling A part of that prerequisite skills is often overlooked or you know not there's not a lot of attention to that. Another thing that I think is important to highlight about structured literacy approaches of the approach they take to pho structure.
Dr. Pam Ka Mh.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling So First of all, there would be a reasonable amount of time allocated for Ph instruction, especially for beginners. And, you know, we don't have research saying that, you know, x number of minutes should have Right. But we do know that these are key skills for children in the early stages of learning to read. They don't get that foundation. Then it kind of undermine the rest of your reading progress.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling So Pho skills would never be the only skills that are taught in a structured litter the approach, but they would get a substantial amount of emphasis for Leon, whereas you know, by contrast in 1 popular typical literacy program, pho skills are something like 1 of 8.
Dr. Pam Ka 0 my
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling areas is even in first grade.
Dr. Pam Ka Wow.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling So... And then the actual approach to pho teaching that in typical literacy practices, be very common for schools to say, you know, well we teach pho, And they're right. Usually, they do teach on it. Mh. But the approach is often a larger unit approach.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Like word families.
Dr. Pam Ka Okay. Yes.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling So children might get words to study, like, look, shook.
Dr. Pam Ka Yes.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Words like that or make, bake, cake, but they're not necessarily being taught, how she blend and segment at the foaming level.
Dr. Pam Ka It's a on. Yeah. It's so interesting that you say that because Carol Tom, when she was here going through her hourglass and our... Earlier podcast, talk about this specifically about how teaching these word families really ignores the prerequisite skills are that very essential. And also it really lends itself a visual memory process where the guest start visually memorizing and can appear to be reading these words when they really are not.
Dr. Pam Ka Right.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And I think 1 thing that happens with beginning decoder, beginning decoder, especially children who struggle with the code, they are often already disposed not to look carefully at words. Mh. And if you have an initial phoneme bra level approach, like you would have structured literacy, it really forces close attention to all the in a word.
Dr. Pam Ka Yep. Internal details.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling That to the internal details. Badly. That. I should say in structured literacy, you also do ultimately teach larger units.
Dr. Pam Ka Mh.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Right like, common morph themes in words, you know, like in a words such as unlikely, the perfect
Dr. Pam Ka suffix. Yeah.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling We but that would come later as for the most part, it would come later as children advance to longer work. And and it would be done systematically. So a couple of other differences I should should highlight in a structured literacy approach, usually children with the reading early on, d types of text Yeah. For these texts that are a good match to the decoding skills safe than taught. Mh.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling So of you know, what we call them decode or not. Right. It should have to be able to decode the words, otherwise, what you're fostering is a guessing. Correct. Type.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Strategy, which is mel.
Dr. Pam Ka Yes.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling In in contrast, in the typical literacy approach Children are often reading predictable types of text. So children might be reading a text about a a child Maria, who's getting her materials together to go to school. And the text reads like this. You know, Maria found her back Maria
Dr. Pam Ka found her. And then go with you.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Maria found her pencil. Mh. Maria found her coat.
Dr. Pam Ka Mh.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And end with each... Sentence on a separate page, there's pictures that know For finding her backpack and her pencil, etcetera. Well, what that does, first of all, the words are not highly d.
Dr. Pam Ka No. Child
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling who's is at the beginning stages of decoding. And the pictures enable them to get. That's what you're kind of tac even if the teacher doesn't explicitly encourage guessing. Which sometimes they are trained to do. Yeah.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling But they don't do that. The child is going to be, you know, you're fostering more of a guessing strategy, because what else is the child supposed to do, it seems decode it, and they don't have the space to decode it.
Dr. Pam Ka Yeah. I have seen exactly the same thing. As you know, I have some grandchildren and And those types of text I've said to my my children, you can read them to them, but please don't have or read them. Because it's gonna call her to guess she's gonna rely on context and pictures, and we need her to be looking at at the code, and that's what we need to rely on. So Yes.
Dr. Pam Ka It it does. It causes a lot of errors later. And the appearance of reading when it's just not there. Right. It's not as correct.
Dr. Pam Ka Oh Yeah.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And another thing I should mention is that structured they would also teach higher levels of language. So it's not only. You know, decoding, and cleaning the awareness and spelling, but also areas such as sentence structure, vocabulary, dis course structure. So many children will also benefit from explicit systematic teaching of those higher levels of language in typical literacy practices, sentence structures an area that's very often against higher trip. Mh.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Discourse structure might get a little bit more attention, you know, what are the features of a narrative, What are the features of informational or expo text. Mh. Again, not necessarily in a way that is highly explicit or system systematic.
Dr. Pam Ka Yes. Teaching all the layers of our language is systems of language. And so often, you know, I think back to Louisa Mo, he says the you're going to be a teacher of reading and writing, you must first be a teacher of language. Absolutely. And that's really what structured Literacy is doing, it's supporting teachers and teaching our language in a very direct explicit manner.
Dr. Pam Ka Right. Yeah. Right. So what are some of the benefits of teaching in a manner of structured literacy
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling for student I would say certainly for especially for students who have d or some other reading problem, the value is that you're directly teaching the area where the weak. So for example, students with d, typically have problems around decoding and pho skills and spelling. So they structured literacy approaches, prioritize, explicit teaching in those areas. But also, I think another thing that is in word for kids who are struggling is that they're often behind. Yeah.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling So need an approach that you certainly first and foremost want effective teaching but also efficient teaching is an important consideration because if children are behind, they they need to catch up. Right? So they need to make more progress.
Dr. Pam Ka Yes.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Then they would normally make as a typical student in order to close the gap with peers. And so structured literacy approaches tend to have an approach that can be is done well, a more efficient approach to.
Dr. Pam Ka And the thing is as well, it benefits all students not that it just benefits the student. So it benefits all and does harm to none. I always think got it that way that all kids will benefit from this and it will not harm any other... You know, not gonna harm in any manner. So we celebrate every student.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling It's it's always easier. You know, it's easier for the teacher to have structured approach in place. It's not And then if you have kids who come in already decoding well or who pick that aspect of reading up very easily. You can move them ahead faster, and those are advocated who might be able to benefit from doing, you know, more independent reading in the classroom we're project work in the classroom. But if you don't have the structure already embedded very hard or impossible to impose that later on.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling As as then new funds to you can't retrofit the bonnet.
Dr. Pam Ka No. You cannot. Then it will it will profoundly impact for their entire life if it's not secure. So I, you know, when I think I hear the term a lot, and I'm sure you have 2 balance. Literacy.
Dr. Pam Ka And there is no balance in literacy. You know, I always think about it is more proportional. In the sense that when you're a novice reader and you're learning the code, proportionately the the the instructional time is spent on helping students unlock that code. Right. And an accurate automatic.
Dr. Pam Ka Manner so that they can read to learn later. And all of this language is coming from or should come from teacher's language in the classroom being very robust. The expectations of the teacher for, like, complete sentences when questions are asked, and really rich, robust, you know, read aloud and fiction and non fiction text. That's where all that language is coming from.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Right. The read aloud piece is very important So there are certainly other areas we would address. But, it's you... It's important to sort of recognize know, developmental. The skills, like all of these skills, you know, decoding and language comprehension, reading comprehension, spelling composition, they're all ultimately important.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Mh. But the relative important shifts come. And deep where kids are developmental. So if you don't prioritize certain foundational skills early on, Yeah. Then undermine a development is using.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Yeah. It undermine development long.
Dr. Pam Ka And those those... Those lack of skills are always going to show up. Yeah. It it often oftentimes we hear about this third grade or fourth grade slump. And it's not necessarily a slump.
Dr. Pam Ka It's nothing it's been hidden all along that the kids going really didn't have accuracy and automatic with the code. And now they are in more complex text, more complex sentence structure, domain specific language and all a sudden it seems to appear that a shot has a reading problem. And that's pretty much like that's pretty much like Curtis. I think in this story. Yes?
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Yes. Yes.
Dr. Pam Ka Yeah.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Well, and and 1 of the things that happened to Curtis is that the assessments that he was a getting is part of tier 1 were not prioritizing accurate reading.
Dr. Pam Ka Mh.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling So when he was reading passages, in in the scenario that's embedded in the article, miss Row realizes that the assessments were scored to ignore minor word reading errors when Curtis was reading in context like off for the. And this for that. And so he was a verbally bright child and he's good at compensating using context. Mh But the problem with allowing him to do that is he's not developing a disposition to look carefully at words.
Dr. Pam Ka Mh
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling neck. In terms of the assessment issues, you know, the scoring just didn't represent his real performance. And that's why he didn't get picked up until later, as as you said, then when he got to more difficult tax.
Dr. Pam Ka Mh
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling it couldn't use that kind of
Dr. Pam Ka compensation Right you.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Right. But it was been better for him to get picked up earlier. Mh for, you know, assessments to be scored properly and for him to get picked up earlier and get help earlier than he did.
Dr. Pam Ka Yeah. 1 of the things in the article that I really like is a table where you talk about feedback when a student is reading an oral passage and how that feedback can have an impact. So I think that... Let me look because that mine's a little bit more annotated. So it's a table table 3.
Dr. Pam Ka Examples of different types of students or reading errors and text. And I I think the point you just made there maybe we would just wanna emphasize that a tiny bin in terms of, like, when kids table making those supposed small errors are saying a instead of done, you know, sometimes teachers and some methodologies are, like, don't worry about that. It's not impacting meaning. I'm not concerned about that. But when children fail to attend to the internal structures of every single word, they are the kids who later on will read a word like inhabit and inhibit.
Dr. Pam Ka Yeah. That 1 phoneme will have a vast difference on meaning. And so the bad habits, you know, profoundly impact comprehension. And so do you mind talking a little bit about the how those those prompting to errors.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling So okay. So so, you know, there a small class of errors that I think there's pretty much universal agreement that it's reasonable for teachers to ignore in scoring. And you can see this for example, if you look at standardized tests or test like the d, games web, other Pb, tend to use similar type of scoring. So usually, self corrections are okay. Correct.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Articulation mis pronunciations that come from articulation errors, like a child who says W for Rabbit. That's how they talk. Mh. But clearly knows that what you're reading is a small furry animal with a big area Right. That would be score is correct.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling For an accents, but the child is is basically is decoding correctly. Right those that would be ignored. Mh. We would not ignore errors like off the, this for that. Usually you would not...
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Wanna ignore, you know, reversals like mother sad for said mother. Mh. Because again, it's 1 it's showing that the child is not attending closely to the text. Mh. If 1 of the examples that I like to give is Jean Sc in her model of reading development had this stage that she referred to as un grooming from print.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Where that's the stage where the kids are so fluid.
Dr. Pam Ka Yes. Okay.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And it seems like they're not paying attention to the print, but it's really because they have auto 1 reading. Yeah. So but the point, the way I like to think about it is before you can become un glued from Glued first.
Dr. Pam Ka Yes.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Hey, really. And that's how you develop the auto authenticity by looking carefully at merge that internal details of words and then kids who are developing well reading will make that process highly automatic and start to recognize you know, words much more automatically. And then they can become in a sense what seems to be un glued, but right it simply not that they're not looking carefully at words. It's just that they can do it so rapidly and automatically.
Dr. Pam Ka Right. And I think I love that. You... When you speak about that with Jean Shaw. And some methodologies and typical literacy never even attempt to have kids glue.
Dr. Pam Ka To the words. And say, I would... You know, where structured Literacy does. Right. You they have to be glued, you know, that that bond...
Dr. Pam Ka That has to be bonded and anchored and bonded Yes. Yeah.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And another, you know, sort of related issue, which is instructional is what kind of feedback should teachers when they're reading. So 1 of the things that happens a lot in general education. And and part of this, you know, they're part of it is because teachers are dealing with large groups of children. Mh. So they may not be it's hard to read individually with every student, but it also is a function of kind of the orientation that many general edge haters are are trained in, which is a more constructive.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Mh. Type, you know, not an explicit teaching. Mh. Type of orientation. So in general education or in typical literacy practices is the best way to put it.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Children might be reading with another child. They might be doing partner reading or. They might just be reading independently even when they're at a stage where they're decoding is that I kind of really still pretty inaccurate.
Dr. Pam Ka Mh.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling You know, those practices, especially for the weaker decoder in a class. Are really problematic because, you know, the other child that's paired with the 4 decoder is not gonna give the kind of
Dr. Pam Ka feedback. Right.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling That you want the child to get, and the feedback should orient the child toward looking carefully at the print and attempting to
Dr. Pam Ka decode. Mh.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And the article that I wrote describes a procedure that teachers can use their you you stuff. But it's also the kind of thing you really could train, you know a good... A para of professional.
Dr. Pam Ka Yes. It's for others
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling don't to do this. So basically, if a child is struggling with a word, unless it's phonetic a irregular word, a word, you know they can't decode that teacher begins by using a pointing cue, a nonverbal verbal cue, which orient the child directly towards the print
Dr. Pam Ka Mh
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And is less disruptive to comprehension and a lot of verbiage. Mh. And then if the child doesn't get it, you can get sort of a short because size verbal cue, like, if a child reads, you know, thin for fan, the teacher might begin by pointing to the a and the child not self correct. The teacher gives a queue like you know, Sure says a, something like that.
Dr. Pam Ka Yes.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And if the child... You know, 1 we hope, the child will ultimately be able at the word, just telling the child the word should be a last resort unless we're irregular or some some very unusual word and they shouldn't be placed in a text
Dr. Pam Ka that Yeah
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling words And then the end of the procedure would be once the child has successfully decode the word, the teacher says, good. Now just read reread that sentence for So you're trying to get the child to, you know, establish fluency and inc.
Dr. Pam Ka Right. And then it's attention to the internal details. The word right. Because that's where the the message is in the print and not seeking out their eyes gl, you know, to a picture pictures from before, they look to the teacher for the answer. Right?
Dr. Pam Ka Right. And so so that they... You... And also chew as a formative feedback to the teacher as to what skills they do have and then correct what to do. What to do next.
Dr. Pam Ka So that's that is table 4 in this article and it's a very brief saint instructional routine for error correction, and I really strongly encourage those who, you know, watch this podcast to also seek out this article. And wonderful thing about the article, To Louise who and thank you for this. If you had anything to do with this, is it's accessible. So if you just Google this title, of course, it comes up, it's a very first things, and structured literacy and typical literacy practices, understanding differences to create instructional opportunities, but it's also on the amazing site reading rockets. And so so often in some the best research is in databases that are only accessible if you are in a graduate school or, you know, you have access students that really research.
Dr. Pam Ka So this article not only rests on strong research, but it also has all these practical applications and you can act actually get access to that. So...
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Right. Such a... Have to give both the journal and the editor. So the journal is teaching exceptional to children, the editor is Kristen.
Dr. Pam Ka Mh.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And real, I think they were... You know, it's because of them that the article is so
Dr. Pam Ka accessible. III extend my thanks to them then. Thank you for that. 1 area that we haven't discussed, I guess, we did talk about error correction with text, and you mentioned a bit about... D decor and predictable text.
Dr. Pam Ka But how key is selecting text for students. I always think about the instructional goal that you have and as a teacher you have many tools in your belt. And so if you have a novice or emergent reader who is there very new and the code and still making errors. If you want them to be practicing the Pho patterns that you've taught that very what would be the right tool for that. So what would be the right text that we would select for that?
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling But I I do think for kids who are at early stages up to coding And again, particularly the kinds of children who struggle with the code with the code. The d dakota books are very useful. I. They're not... You know, there's a wide variety of folks being the whole.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And they're sort of... It's good to think of as kind of a continuum. Mh. So you have books that, you know, have to start at a very, very low level with Cbc words with a. Correct who have too many site words and then you have other series that kind of move more quickly through different word patterns.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And you know, they can both be useful, depending on the child's level and the degree of difficulty. I used to... When I was a full time faculty member, I used to run a tutoring program with my teacher candidates in a local public school. And we used to use c series. And Mh.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling I I can tell you that, I mean, we had kids... You know, it is true that it's great we, you know, beautiful children's literature.
Dr. Pam Ka The teacher or whether when they're young and novice readers right. Yeah. Mh.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling But it is not motivating. For kids to be placed in a book that they're hailing in. That they cannot read. And we have kids read sometimes, you know, because it was all they could read they would be reading these very simple code text be with, you know, just a few vowels. And we were usually working with first and second graders level readers, beginning level.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And we would have kids say... This is the first book I ever read.
Dr. Pam Ka Right?
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And no. They would low They
Dr. Pam Ka would yes.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Honeymoon. Yeah.
Dr. Pam Ka The first thing I've ever read.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And that that is... I think also 1 of the advantages of chrome your intervention. Mh. Have kids are... Still at a stage.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Mh. You know, we don't have as much of the overlay of of, you know, emotional and behavior rule sometimes perhaps secondary. Kind of problems that develop from, you know, you than you the failure and small.
Dr. Pam Ka They're... It's so many from motivating to students to be able to read something sec successfully. I know sometimes the dogs will say, well, these are so boring. They're not boring to a student who can read that accurately and automatically and have that feel that power of being able to read, rather than... Mud through and guessing.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling That's right. Sir. Except it's very motivated.
Dr. Pam Ka Yes. It is. Yes. It is. So I guess just in closing, wanna give us a little bit more of the scenario of Isabelle and how she goes through this process, and then maybe we'll close up.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Okay. Sure. Well, so she does ultimately realize, you know, why Curtis wasn't identified earlier because... Although some of the right kinds of assessments were being given, what was prioritized was this text reading, assessment that wasn't being scored Mh. Mh.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And she asked for training in a structure literacy program, which per which her principal fortunately has funds to dip So I think you know, 1 of the things we see is that often teachers are not well prepared. Particularly in general education, the teachers don't tend to be preparedness structured literacy method. But even in special education, it's an issue because there are so many skills in which you have to prepare beginning hers and Sometimes there's a lack of coherent, faculty are not all equally knowledgeable, about structured literacy and so depending on you know, who the teacher candidate takes, that's may not be a highly coherent program. So I think that ideally what we would want, for teachers like Miss Rowe is that they get a good grounding and sure be. But the actual teaching, you know, the ability to teach children like Curtis.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Yeah. Is clearly gonna come more at an advanced program level, not at a of this. Mh. We're not gonna train all pre service teachers to teach kids like Curtis that are really struggling. But we we want everybody to have a good ass.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling And mean why is it important to teach explicitly and not encourage guessing that words and things like that? So ultimately, in this row is able to get training in that kind of approach. She sees her use of structured literacy methods. Paying off with Curtis, but she realizes that he still... You know, he still has have tendency do to guess at words.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Right wouldn't
Dr. Pam Ka have a word to break.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Yes. The habit becomes a very hard habit to break. And so she kind of a adopt back scaffolding method that you alluded to earlier that I was talking about to try to help him break that habit.
Dr. Pam Ka Yeah. Also, Louise, I wanna share with everybody... I'm sure you're very aware that the International d sexy Association has many resources. Yeah. Reefs.
Dr. Pam Ka Publications about structured literacy, if you want to know more. Do you wanna share anything about Ida and how they are supporting structured literacy,
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling Well, there are certainly a very strong support structured Literacy, at the conference, the National Conference this fall. Theme is structured literacy, and there are going to be many people. I'm gonna be doing a symposium with some really wonderful colleagues, but there's many, many people who will be doing S symposium and presentations related to structured literacy, perspectives, which is Mh. Ida journal has several issues that will be relevant. Structured literacy that will be coming out in the coming years.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling So they're really a great resource
Dr. Pam Ka And certainly, Ida and knowledge and practice standards are what we should really be focusing on and embedded with structured literacy of course, but really what teacher should know and be able to do. I so often hold those up and trainings and many teachers are not even aware that they exist. So I would... Strongly encouraged as well. Teachers to seek out the knowledge and practice standards in.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling I agree.
Dr. Pam Ka Yeah. So thank you so much Louise. We are... I should... Doctor Spear-Swerling for joining us.
Dr. Pam Ka And again, I can't emphasize enough how comprehensive evidence based and accessible. This text... This article is from t exceptional children. This is the go to I think in terms of understanding the differences between structured literacy and typical literacy. And of course, seeking out Ida and all their releases sources around structure Literacy also very supportive.
Dr. Pam Ka And I wanna do a shout out to doctor Spear-Swerling because she will be joining us for the patent literacy symposium, which will be health June tenth tenth to the twelfth 20 20 right here at pat Harrisburg, talking specifically on this topic. So thank you, Dr. You're swirling.
Dr. Louise Spear-Swerling You so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to share this 1.
Dr. Pam Ka