Episode 89: Not My Problem... Until It was Science of Reading for Secondary Teachers

When most educators hear the phrase Science of Reading, they picture elementary classrooms, phonics lessons, and beginning readers. But what if we've been thinking about it too narrowly?

In this episode of the Compass PD Podcast, Dr. Carrie Hepburn sits down with Dr. Natalie Fallert, former secondary English teacher and instructional leader, to explore what the Science of Reading really means for middle and high school classrooms. After spending the past year immersed in the research, Dr. Fallert shares the mindset shift that transformed her thinking—from believing literacy wasn't a secondary teacher's responsibility to recognizing that every content area plays a role in helping students access complex text.

Together, they unpack practical, research-based strategies that any secondary educator can implement without becoming a reading specialist. You'll hear why oral language, word recognition, morphology, background knowledge, fluency, and comprehension matter across disciplines, along with actionable ideas like rapid research, partner talk, and intentional reading routines that help students engage more deeply with rigorous content.

Whether you teach English, science, social studies, math, or career and technical education, this conversation will challenge assumptions, spark new thinking, and leave you with practical strategies you can use immediately to help every student become a more confident reader and learner.

Secondary Science of Reading blogs by Dr. Natalie Fallert

Not My Problem... Until It Was: A Secondary Teacher's Wake-Up Call on the Science of Reading Pt. 1

Making Sense of Word Recognition in Secondary Classrooms

Eyes on Print, Voices in Sync: Strengthening Oral Language and Fluency

Comprehension isn't a Strategy: It's Words and Knowledge

Print Awareness Didn't End in Elementary School: How Explicit Instruction in Text Structures Supports Comprehension

Transcript

Welcome And Why Secondary Literacy Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Compass PD Podcast, where we dive into evidence-based practices and research-driven strategies that empower educators and leaders to make a lasting impact. I'm Dr. Carrie Hepburn, and today I am joined by Dr. Natalie Fowler. Hi, Natalie. Hello. Natalie has spent the last year immersed in the research surrounding the science of reading, and really more specifically, what that research means for secondary educators. She's read the books, listened to the podcast, explored the studies, and recently captured her learning in a series of blogs designed to help secondary educators make sense of it all. Today we're going to talk about her journey and what surprised her and what every secondary educator should know. When most people hear the phrase the science of reading, they picture kindergarten and first grade classrooms teaching phonics lessons and little kids sounding out words. As a former secondary teacher yourself, what was your initial reaction?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

My initial reaction was it's not my thing. When I thought about the science of reading, I thought about phonics, and that's not my thing. So I did just tune it out. And we were looking at the Iowa Comprehensive Literacy Plan. And it's like a 200-page document, government document that really broke down the science of reading in some respects and what their literacy plan looked like, which was grounded in the science of reading. I reluctantly started reading because I'm a great colleague and friend, and I was gonna do it. And in the midst of reading it, things just started connecting. They did a very good job of breaking down the progressions of each component and what that looks like at different grade levels. And so, in looking at that progression, that really opened my eyes to how it impacts secondary educators and what that looks like a little bit in a secondary setting. In reading this, I started making some of these connections. I made connections back to when I was writing my doctorate and all these things that I was seeing in my classroom, I'm now reading in this. But ultimately, I had this idea that it was phonics only. And through reading all of this information, I realized that it is so much more than phonics.

From Phonics Only To Scarboroughs Rope

SPEAKER_00 3:10

And it does live in the secondary world, and we see it every day.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Okay. You mentioned that you were seeing it in your classroom what grades were you were seeing this in, just so they have some context.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

And third, nine, twelve English. I talked 10th grade. I saw every 10th grade student who came through our community, and they got to me in 10th grade, and I still had kids who were not reading on grade level. And I'm not talking about, oh, they're 10th graders reading in a seventh or eighth grade level. I'm talking about they were reading at a fifth or below grade level. And uh when a secondary educator says they can't read, they can read. We know that they can read, they can decode the words, uh, but what they are struggling with is that comprehension. They have no clue what they just read. If you ask them to read out loud in class, it's very clunky and chunky and um laborious and it's terrible for everyone involved. I thought about when I listen to Audible or a book on tape or audiobook, I always listen to it at one and a half to two times the speed. But if you take that and you drop it below, put it at a 0.5 or 0.75, you just listen for 30 seconds. It's terrible. At the end of 30 seconds, you're not paying attention. You can't tell us what you just listened to, even though you can understand all the text. If your students are reading out loud in class and that's what it sounds like, then no one is comprehending. And so when I say a kid can't read, they can read it. They can decode it and say the words out loud for the most part. 90 to 95% of your kids can do that. You're gonna have a very, very small group that cannot. But that's what I mean by when we say they can't read, I'm gonna say that most secondary educators, that's what they mean. My blog is it wasn't my problem until it was, and that was really centered around the idea of the science of reading. I knew that as a secondary educator, when I was in the classroom with kids, it was a problem. And I did have to address it. I just didn't know how. As I was reading the comprehensive literacy plan from Iowa, I wanted to learn more. And so I think you had actually turned me on to the Science of Reading Amplify podcast, and it um had an episode on there with Doug Lamauve, who wrote a book called Um Teach Like a Champion, The Science of Reading. That particular episode was about what it looked like in the secondary classroom. Listening to him talk about that it is our problem at the secondary level, it just looks different and we have to tackle it in a different way. Yeah. Really helped me. In Doug's podcast, he talks about how they started exploring the science of reading from a secondary lens and trying to offer some ways to address certain parts of Scarwell's rope and uh and the science of reading in a secondary classroom that is um not only respectable to the students, but also to the teacher. I'm not gonna teach phonics. You don't want me to teach it. It's not my lane. I don't know how. I wasn't trained, unless you give me extensive training, you can't ask me to do this. When I say that it's respectable to secondary educators, it's that idea of like, we know that your job is to teach math, your job is to teach Shakespeare, your job is to teach poetry. It's not to teach reading in the sense of products. Um, so how can we still address that at this level in ninth, tenth, eleventh grade and it not be childish? And you also still cover the content that you were hired to teach.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

I do believe that's if we have kids that need phonics in high school, there's a time and a place for that. Don't ignore that, right? We're not saying we're not getting it. We have to do something, but that's not happening in that tier one English classroom. There are things that we can do in that tier one classroom to help kids access text and complex text and rigorous text. We'll talk about that. Don't worry, we're not saying don't meet kids where they are. We're just saying that in that tier one, um, maybe that's not the that's not the place for it. Right. Did you have any um assumptions that you had to unlearn?

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Um when we think about the Scarwell's rope and the two strands, and you're really looking at that bottom portion that's like is it word recognition? Yeah, word recognition. And that's right. Phonics lives there, right? Yeah. Um I learned a little bit more that that's where morphology lives. Yeah. As we're learning about phonemic awareness and phonics and all of those pieces, it grows into something more at that secondary level. And so, what role are we as secondary educators playing in teaching kids morphology? I'm not going to teach kids blending sounds, right? But my definition and understanding of phonics grew. I think one of the coolest things that I learned was about orthographic mapping. As a secondary educator, I was like, oh my gosh, this is a missing piece of a puzzle. And it's something that I see a lot. Then uh in classrooms where we aren't uh

Orthographic Mapping Needs Eyes On Print

SPEAKER_00 9:05

deliberately modeling a text for kids and getting eyes on print. Sometimes we'll just read it to them, but they don't have the print in front of them, or we supplement with a video. Uh it is so important for our kids to see the words as they're hearing them because that's how we create this mental dictionary where they can read it. They have to have eyes on print. And we, as the smart educated teachers in the room, we need to be saying those words out loud so that they can see them and read them at the same time. We know that our kids are struggling in our classrooms, but they don't know how to help them because nobody taught us how to do that. And it is okay that you don't know how to do this. One thing that I've learned through this process is that it really doesn't take a lot. You can start by doing little bitty small things every day that do not take a lot of learning, but they do take intentional uh planning. And you will see a difference in your students. Um I've always known that oral language is important and that it plays a significant role in lots of aspects of your life. But when I really dug into the science of reading, it's not just important because I think it's important, it is a foundation. We talk, no one has to teach us how to do that. But reading, we weren't meant to read, but we were meant to communicate through oral language. And so the stronger somebody is in oral language, the easier it's gonna be for them to read and make those connections. As a high school teacher, how often are you having kids talk in your class? And I'm not saying give a presentation, I'm saying just converse back and forth with each other, uh, having those discussions in class so that they are hearing conversations that are happening. Um you don't have to relearn anything as a secondary educator, you don't have to change your content. How can you just get kids talking in class about your content? Um, I want 90 seconds where they're talking to each other. Um there is a uh speaking and listening strand in every state standard. And all too often, teachers think that that means that they have to publicly present, that they have to stand in front of everybody. It's like that's like one of the standards. The rest of them are all about collaborating with each other and talking with others, uh, and listening and uh how to provide the appropriate feedback and all of those things that we could do every day in our classroom that's easy.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Your blogs do a really nice job of inviting us to rethink some of our assumptions. So, one way of building that oral language, and that that's the foundation, which is perfect for us moving into talking about word recognition and fluency, because you need that oral language to recognize words and to become fluent readers, right? The more oral language you have, the better that helps you in word recognition and fluency. One of your blogs focuses in the secondary level on word recognition, which might sound like an elementary topic. Why should a middle or high school teacher care about word recognition?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

When I think about uh like that word recognition, that's where that orthographic mapping comes in, right? We're creating this mental dictionary, and the more I read, um the more words make it into my mental dictionary and become automatic recall of what that word is. But not only is it that we're reading it, but we also have to hear it. So do we, if you have kids sitting in your class who missed phonics instruction or didn't get any, then they definitely need somebody to say that word for them out loud. Um, think about where chaos, right? It's still very different. I think I know what chaos is, but not because I know the arrangements of phonemes and graphemes. I just know it. If you have kids sitting in your class who weren't taught phonics, then they need you to say that word so that they can start making that connection. That word recognition allows them to then go read it independently and know that that word is chaos and not chaos or you know, chaos or whatever you would they would do with it. The more we show them these patterns in language, then they apply it in other places, and

Fluency Frees Up Thinking

SPEAKER_00 14:20

then they're like, oh, okay, I'm I could say the word, you know, uh observation. Do I know what it means? Like maybe, maybe not. Um I was in a classroom in this spring, and I introduced to this group of juniors at high school their orthographic lexica, and I'm like, it's your mental dictionary. I told them what we were doing. I was like, I want you to build more of your mental dictionary. I want you to look in this text and any words that you might not know or seem interesting. So this kid had highlighted the word integrity. I said, Why did you write this word down? And he told me it was because he didn't know what it was. And I said, Oh, I'm gonna say the word, and I want you to tell me if you've ever heard it before. And so when I said integrity, he was like, Oh, yeah, I've heard that word. Was it a good or bad thing? He was like, It's a good thing. I go, Do you want to have integrity? And he goes, Yes. And I said, You know what this word is. That word recognition of being able to see it on the page has not made it into your brain. I bet that because I stopped and had a conversation with this kid about that word, he will know it forever. And so that when I think about word recognition, and we we ask kids why they don't understand a text, it's like sometimes as secondary educators, we'll just read the text to them or condense it into slides. Yes, we are we're not helping them. What we don't realize is we're not helping them because they have to see the words and hear them. And that was something that I learned. Like in reading all of this, I was like, Oh, I did not know that that's how we learned language. I didn't know it.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

One of the biggest takeaways I had as I was reading through your blogs was that um fluency wasn't just about reading fast, it's about freeing up the cognitive resources, the mental load on students' brains so they could think deeply about what they're reading. So that automaticity allows them to really think about what they're reading. So let's shift into your next blog or one of your next blogs, which was comprehension isn't a strategy, it is words and knowledge. Can you tell us more about what you meant when you said that?

SPEAKER_00 16:46

And secondary English teachers are guilty of this, we'll want to teach kids strategies for comprehension. If they can't read the text, first

Comprehension Requires Words And Knowledge

SPEAKER_00 16:55

then the comprehension strategies aren't necessarily reading strategies. They need to be able to read it, and then we would teach comprehension strategies to get them to go deeper. But if they don't know the words on the page and they don't have enough background information about the topic, then it is hard for them to do the comprehension piece of it. If you're getting ready to look at like 1984 and it's a dystopian text, if your kids know the background or they have background knowledge about dystopian text, if I can teach my kids that anytime they pick up a dystopian, these are things that are most likely going to happen, that there's a system in place that has gone crazy and you have to figure out what that craziness is. And um, there are people going against and with the system, and there are people breaking rules. And it's like if you can, if kids know this about a dystopian text, then as soon as they start reading 1984, even though it's a cumbersome read, if they're looking for those things, it will help them better understand it. If I'm reading Harry Potter and I've never read it before, and I see the word muggle, and I go to try to look it up in a dictionary, it's not gonna be in a dictionary, or back in the day, whatever, at first, you know. It's not gonna be in a dictionary. So I have to know that in fantasy, I'm not supposed to know this word yet, that somewhere it's gonna be defined for me in the text. If I can give kids information about dystopian text or fantasy text or whatever it is that they're reading at the time, that takes off some of that cognitive load for those kids so they can comprehend it.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

I really liked that you you uh gave uh a concrete example with Life 1984 and dystopian text. I think that helps people um connect to it better because it is um this is complex.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

If if I'm looking at a history book, like textbook, you're gonna have words on the page and then you're gonna have a graph or you're gonna have a map. That map or graph might negate what's in the words, it might give a description of that, it might be something that's added but not really related. If you haven't taught kids that, then their comprehension is lost on the page because they think that this graph has to do with the text and it doesn't. That's how things get more complex at that secondary level. Teaching into that provides that background. If your kids know, every time I open up this book, I need to decide is this visual or graphic enhancing, negating, describing? What's it doing? That's gonna help or hinder their comprehension if they don't know that.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

So, really quick, I want to kind of recap what I think I've heard you say over our time together. So, one, we need to really get good about building oral language. That's foundational. Two, we need to work on that word recognition that's gonna help um fluency and accuracy, right? So then we can get into this three, this next part, which is background knowledge and comprehension. I heard you explain background knowledge a couple of different ways. So, one way being the kinds of text or genres that students would be um immersed in, right? So explaining that uh typically like a dystopian has these elements or these characteristics in a social studies text, you might see this with the um the images or the visuals that they're they're incorporating within the text. And then you also have talked about building background knowledge about the topic or the content to help kids access that text better. Um, and that the strategies that you're teaching can be about accessing the text and then about engaging in the text at a more analytical, deeper level. Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Yes, capturing that. Not that I really went into those strategies of getting into that analysis part, but they can't do that part without struggling with lack of vocabulary background, the ability to fluently read it. Those those are foundational pieces. We ask kids to write about things. Well, if they didn't understand the text, it's really hard for them to write about it. So it's not a writing problem, it's most likely a reading problem. Then I I did offer a lot of different ideas and suggestions, but I think for for that background comprehension type piece, I think you have to think. About your kids, what it is that you're teaching at that moment, and uh what they need first. It doesn't mean teach all of it because that's that's too much uh for you to answer them. What are little pieces that you can chunk off? If you're an 11th grade teacher and you're like, well, they've taught argument every year since sixth grade, remind them what's in an argument in a text. You can do this in any subject area, and it takes 30 seconds to just remind them or to teach them.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

One of my favorite things that I learned from you at that secondary level to help build background knowledge was about rapid research. And it wasn't like a whole period. I'm giving you 15 minutes, you have access to videos,

Rapid Research And Simple Classroom Routines

SPEAKER_01 22:45

simpler texts, and you with a partner are going to read or we're going to read it together. That's another way I've seen you help build background knowledge before students get into uh a particular text or a genre.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

When we do that rapid research, do you want to curate some sources so that they aren't spending time looking for sources? You're just like, okay, I'm gonna give you 15 minutes to look at any one of these four things and learn as much as you can about this topic, right? This is the perfect time for you to give them lower-level text or infographics or videos so that they can get their feet wrapped around or, you know, and get some stickiness so that then you can give them the grade level text. So we're not gonna replace the grade level text with these items, we're gonna use those as a springboard. You give them 15-20 minutes. It's it's a quick way for you to get them all on the same page. Um I've curated four sources, say for them. I pretty much know what is what's in those four sources. When kids are pulling stuff, you start noticing patterns. What type of information are they pulling? Oh, they all navigated toward the video or they all navigated toward the infographic. In 15 minutes of just watching your kids, you're learning something about their research skills.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

And I think um that's a great strategy that anyone can do. You that can happen in English, science, social studies, you know, CTE, yeah, any grade level, English teachers. So to help them um access those increasingly complex texts. So um I want to move into like making this practical, practical. So if I'm a secondary teacher right now listening, I'm thinking it's all making sense, but what can I do on Monday?

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Picking one of anything that we talked about, just choose one. I'm gonna try partner talking in my classroom. And what does that look like? Or um I want to try a fluency strategy. And it's crazy because fluency can be done in any classroom. Um, I was just talking to a math teacher the other day, and we talked about how just reading aloud a math problem to your students so that they see where the breaks are in the commas and what parts should be chunked together is not only gonna teach semantics and syntax for your students, but it's also going to give them a better understanding of what they're supposed to do with the math problem. And then asking them to read it with you. Say, I'm gonna read it, and then I want you to read it with me. So it's gonna take 30 seconds for you to read it out loud and then them to choral read it with you, and then move on. Then start doing the math problem. There are so many things that you can start as a daily strategy or a daily routine that you have absolutely no clue how much they will impact your students. And it's little to no effort on your part. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

So, as we wrap up, there are three ideas I hope our listeners took away today. One, science of reading isn't just elementary, reading development continues well beyond primary, and understanding how students process text will help everyone, right? And help their kids learn what they want them to learn and teach them. Second, secondary teachers, I didn't hear you one time say that they had to become reading specialists. Correct. They'll be happy to hear that, but understanding concepts like word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, and knowledge building, like building that background knowledge,

Final Takeaways And Blog Series

SPEAKER_01 26:35

can help them remove barriers that prevent kids from accessing their on-grade-level rigorous content and texts.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

There are so many things that we can do that are simple. You don't have to do a ton of learning or research around it. You just need to be willing to try it. A lot of these things you might already be doing, they just might need to be tweaked a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Yes. Every classroom is a literacy classroom because every classroom asks students to read, write, speak, listen, and think about what they're teaching.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

But literacy looks different in all of those classrooms.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Yes. Natalie's entire blog series um will be linked in our show notes. If today's our conversation sparked your interest, I highly encourage you to read that blog series and continue exploring the research alongside us. Um, thank you all for joining us on the Compass PD podcast. Remember at Compass PD, we believe that every educator has the power to inspire change and transform student learning. Stay focused, stay inspired, and keep making a difference.