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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.

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Reading Teachers Lounge

Intervention in the Upper Grades

October 05, 2023 • Shannon Betts and Mary Saghafi • Season 6 • Episode 3

0:00 | 1:19:07

Shannon and Mary meet with Kionna Squires (@DaLiteracyLady) to talk about the challenges facing older struggling readers. During the discussion, they explain how meeting students where they are IS rigorous and the right thing to do for our readers. They also share ideas for boosting student engagement and their favorite activities for upper grade reading intervention.

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Intervention in the Upper Grades with Kionna Squires

Mary Saghafi: [00:00:00] Hello, welcome to the reading teachers lounge. We have a special guest today. I'm so excited to welcome Miss Kiana Squires, who is known as the literacy lady on Instagram and social media platforms. She is a literacy or reading specialist, and she has a lot of experience here with upper grades and that's what we're going to be talking about today.

She happens to live in Atlanta with Shannon and I and a few weeks ago, we were so lucky to do a meet up with her and she had a gathering of people in the field of literacy and we were talking just about this topic about children in upper grades and how can we best reach struggling readers in the upper grades.

So, I am very pleased to collaborate with her and also welcome her to the Reading Teachers Lounge today.

Shannon Betts: So, welcome, Kiana. Y'all are going to love her as much as we do.

Kionna Squires: Thank you so much for that warm welcome. I really do [00:01:00] appreciate it. I thank you guys for inviting me here, and I'm so excited to share my knowledge with everybody.

Mm hmm.

Shannon Betts: So tell us a little bit about yourself. We met you on Instagram, but for people who haven't yet met you on Instagram or haven't met you in real life like we have, tell us about yourself and the work you do within the world of literacy, what you've taught in the past and what you're currently doing.

Kionna Squires: So yes, so my name is Kiana Squires, but I like you guys said I go by the literacy lady on Instagram. I also have a Facebook, which is just Kiana Squires, but currently I am a reading instructional coach, and I support teachers that are in grades in three to five in my current position, but online I support teachers in grades three to 12.

So I have been teaching reading for it's, it's my 11th year in like public school, but I used to teach daycare pre K. So with all that experience, [00:02:00] it's about 15 years now in education. I have taught since I've been officially a teacher, I've taught in grades three to five, and then last year I got the wonderful opportunity to teach kindergarten.

So I got to see the spectrum of, you know, how students were in the upper elementary grades, and then got to see what it looked like, especially reading what that looks like at the lower grades. I have taught in three separate states, so I've, I'm not just in Georgia, I've taught in Pennsylvania. and Maryland.

So a lot of my lens comes from being, you know, across the east coast and seeing how things have things as far as reading instruction has occurred within, you know, the east coast. So one thing that I've definitely noticed in teaching and all those three different States as well as talking to different teachers all over the country is that there's so much confusion about how to teach reading effectively.

[00:03:00] Even with the research out here and with all the people that we have that are leading the literacy charges. It still seems like teachers are just coming into the profession, totally confused about what to do. A lot of them are leaving the profession very early because they're not getting any help, any support.

So that's what really inspired me to want to help teachers just understand how to plan and teach reading. I have a business where I focus on helping reading teachers plan their lessons by showing them how to align their reading lessons to their state standards, because a lot of the times they have reading curriculums that don't even align at all to their state standards.

So I give them that kind of support. We also look over their reading assessments. I help them just be able to understand them, understand the purpose of them, know when to use them, especially when it comes to creating those differentiated lessons and those [00:04:00] intervention plans, because those of us that are teaching the upper grades right now, most of us know that.

Most of our time is spent teaching those foundational skills and not so much as grade level skills. So just as much as we know how to teach and have support with grade level skills, teachers in those upper grades need to have support when it comes to differentiating lessons teaching those foundational skills like phonics.

So I just really help them. We in a sense of feeling like they're not alone. We also talk a lot about, you know, when we are offering those differentiated instruction plans to our students, we're fostering a collaborative and inclusive classroom culture, and we, we make it so that all students feel welcome, no matter what their reading abilities are, and creating that kind of environment actually aids in their learning.

increasing student achievement. [00:05:00] So, you know, I just, I just have a real passion for helping reading teachers. And those are the things that I do. We are so lucky to

Mary Saghafi: have you. And this is exactly what we're kind of honing in on. And, you know, here in the reading teachers lounge, we kind of lead with a little bit of vulnerability and, and talk about what are some of the challenges in the classroom and some of the challenges that we face.

So and I know that you do that too when you're speaking with audiences, which is why we connect so well. So in your experience what have you found to be the biggest barriers to students learning to read, especially in these upper grades?

Kionna Squires: So I would definitely have to say it's been the mindset shift especially at schools with administrators who are not really willing to switch from balanced literacy to structured literacy.

Either the leadership is not aware of the research, they just don't understand how it impacts their, their demographics and their population, or. [00:06:00] Just be speaking very transparently. They're just flat out choosing to ignore that research. They've been given the, the information, but because they're so comfortable with teaching the traditional way and training their teachers in the traditional way of teaching reading, that's just.

Students are just not getting the found skills or any of the skills that they need for that matter, because we're still choosing to do things like having them memorize words instead of really learning that speech to print process. We're having them try to analyze these complex texts without really giving them that practice of, you know, learning what a learning text structures so having students.

at schools where there's a barrier between getting the explicit instruction they need. That's where I'm seeing the most struggle at.

Shannon Betts: [00:07:00] I've seen that too. I've also seen a pushback with just sort of the some of the administrators are like, but I need to be rigorous. I need you to push the grade level work.

We want to bring up test scores and, you know, I would be telling my administrators this 5th grader can't read cat in the hat. You know, like give me two years with them and I'll try to get you a passing score on the state test. But I need about two years to teach this child how to decode English and they were, they're never going to be able to pass the state test if we don't teach them how to read.

And sometimes I think, like you said, maybe they just haven't read that research or they're, they just feel comfortable with that traditional way. Or then also they're getting pushed back from above too of that, you know, push the rigor, you know, or. Let's just put them on a program like IReady and hope for the best.

And it's just not about that. It needs to be explicit instruction. It needs to be this, you know, like [00:08:00] the right amount of grade level content versus differentiated and supported content that allows every student to be successful. And like you said, too, building that classroom culture. Where the students are engaged once they get work.

I mean, I've said this since season one of the podcast. Once the students get work that they can be successful at, they will do anything you want them to, because they have been stuck in a cycle of failure for years and they're so appreciative when you finally give them work that was within their developmental zone, that they will be engaged and work for you.

Kionna Squires: Yeah, I agree. I was just going through like, you know how kids give you little notes at the end of the year and they're thanking you and all the things that they did. And one of the things I noticed was students were saying things like, Miss Squires, I appreciate you for teaching me about inferences and main idea and figurative language because they feel empowered when [00:09:00] you give them those tools to be able to navigate a complex text.

And then they start to realize, Ooh, I can use these tools to understand more and more text. Now I'm not in class totally lost. I actually know what's going on. And then I will always tell people, you know, you will see those. Big, tall students who would seem like they don't want to be in class learning at all.

All of a sudden they're eating out of your palms and asking, when is small group? What are we going to be doing today? What book am I reading today? So you give them that excitement when you explicitly teach them the skills that they need versus asking them to discover those skills on their own. That, that just doesn't work for them.

Shannon Betts: Giving them a taste of success. I mean, is the best motivator out there. And I don't think these students choose to fail, you know, they're not choosing to fail. We just, we're failing them by not meeting them where they are. [00:10:00]

Mary Saghafi: Yeah, I totally agree. It's a disservice that if we go in with the mindset that some of these students are going to fail, and whether that is an explicit thing that you're actually saying, or it's something that's just in your subconscious about, I'm just not going to reach these students.

Kids. And, you know, I know that We're talking about kids who have complex needs and all children have complex needs, but there are, there are some other factors why we are missing some of these other children when they, when they come to us. So some kids come to kindergarten, very kindergarten ready.

And I think that we've identified some of those, but Kiana, can you maybe highlight a little bit more about like the complexities of why we're not reaching these older struggling readers?

Kionna Squires: Sure. Yeah. So when I think about why there are so many older, struggling readers, I, well, first, when I talk about this topic, I always use the term, no [00:11:00] blame, no shame, because we have to understand what's truly going on in order for us to come up with solutions about it.

And as we talk more and more about the barriers that are holding our students back. It will sound like we are blaming certain groups, but really we're just being transparent about what is happening. So when I think about what's happening to our older readers, I first think about the beginning phases of their life.

When their, their parents are going to the doctor and they're getting ready to, to have the baby, what we're noticing is that hospitals and doctors are not giving parents the information they need to be able to build those language and literacy skills that can start as early as the third trimester of pregnancy.

So you just have a lot of parents that through no fault of their own, they're just not aware of the simple things that they could do to build up their child's [00:12:00] language skills. So just things like talking to their, you know, children in their bellies or talking to student or children when, you know, even though they can't talk back, there are a lot of parents that just aren't doing that because they don't know to do that.

They're thinking, well, my baby can't talk back yet. So there's no point of talking. And not knowing that that's a way to build those critical thinking skills and, you know, helping, helping their children go beyond questions like what's your favorite color and fruit and having them think more about the world around them and things like that.

So because students. Or I keep saying students because I'm so used to referring to children as students. But because that's what's happening in the beginning phases of a lot of our, our students lives, they're missing those early foundational skills that could be developed from zero to three, zero to four.

And that leaves a very big gap in their instruction. But then [00:13:00] you also have early Education institutions like daycares and pre K. Pre K programs that they're not always focusing on building that speech to print connection for students. So students are not mastering that alphabetical principle.

They're not. Mastering how to form their uppercase letters, lowercase letters. A lot of schools and daycares are not even using those fun singing songs anymore. Like I remember when I was in daycare I taught at the daycare. That was, we had a daycare at our college. I went to point park university in Pittsburgh and there was a daycare called the children's school.

And there was a guy that I learned about named Rafi, I think that's how you pronounce his name, Rafi, and when I tell you he has so many cute little songs that taught children about, you know, brush, brush, brush your teeth. He had one about Old MacDonald had a [00:14:00] band and instead of the kids making the animal sounds, they were making the band sounds and just helping them build that language you.

Those language skills, but then also asking them questions about what they're listening to. And a lot of our babies just aren't getting that rich education either. So they're going from the home to early day kids, not building on that foundational, those skills. And then they're entering kindergarten and they're also not getting those skills.

So, you know, the, the schools and what, and especially I saw this. Going back to kindergarten and teaching a lot of our kindergarten classes are focusing a lot on storytelling which they, we've got to do our storytelling, but then we're not allowing our students to master how to write their letters what the letter sounds are we're asking students to memorize words through sight word flashcards.[00:15:00]

So students are just going through a system where it's Kind of compounding the challenges because they're not getting that explicit instruction. And then those kindergartners moves to first grade. And the same thing happens where they're not getting that direct instruction, but they're being passed on to the next grade.

And this cycle could happen until our babies are graduating from high school without the proper and necessary skills that they need. So our older readers are kind of Being built. If you, you know, if you will, because of what they're going through. I was just at a training with the Rollins and I don't know if you guys are familiar with the center here that's for language and literacy.

That's attached to the Atlanta speech school. And one of the statistics that they shared the other day was that in 2019. Only 37 percent of students in the 12th grade could read proficiently, but [00:16:00] 86 percent of them graduated from high school. So that kind of lets us know that our students are just progressing through the system without getting direct instruction, people are assuming they have the knowledge, people are not referring them to response to intervene, they're just going through the motions, but then still being passed.

So that's truly what I see is happening to our struggling readers. And it's really a disservice to them because it's a, it's, it's a blame game now. The school is blaming the parents for why the students are coming in so low. The school is blame. The, excuse me, the parents are blaming the school for why nothing's happening.

But in the end, the research is telling us. If the schools are using a structured literacy approach, that it doesn't matter how our students are coming to school, we still can help them. So if we're having such an increase in [00:17:00] struggling readers, I have to just say it's because the system is creating them.

Shannon Betts: We had an episode in our first season called The Big Secret, and we were talking because we are in the same niche, you and I, like, I have always worked with the upper, you know, third, fourth, fifth, sixth graders who are struggling to learn to read. That was my kind of niche that I kind of got into earlier in my career.

And those students are masters at hiding the big secret that they can't read. So if the teachers, I mean, I only realized it when I was forced to do devil's running records every week by my school. And I mean, when you listen to those kids read and you can't, you're hearing them struggle week after week on a passage, then you're like, Oh.

I need to change up what I'm teaching because I'm not preparing them to read this passage. And all of a sudden your instructional priorities change when you listen to them read. But these students if, if, if you're not in that regular practice of getting running records and listening to them read, then these students are really good at [00:18:00] fooling their teachers because Look on other partner and they're not copycats.

They're just sort of watching sort of the actions of what their elbow partner doing and they're kind of waiting for you to like start the answer on the board and then they're scribbling something down. And I mean, because they're just wanting to get along to, you know, I mean, they want it, they feel.

They start to feel shame because they realize something's different at about grade three, and they want to hide that secret. They're not going to walk up to the teacher and say, Hey, guess what? I can't read, you know,

Kionna Squires: right, right.

Mary Saghafi: No, they're going to use their behaviors, communication. And sometimes that behavior is hiding.

And sometimes that behavior is acting out. And teachers are also required to read through that behavior too. And that's a big challenge as well. I have to say what I really loved is that you started even. Before kindergarten. Speaking about some of the things that parents can do, and as teachers, we can also educate parents as well.

But I think that the most critical part [00:19:00] of the phonological awareness, the development of your language, is the listening piece. It's the first part. It's being able to listen to songs, predict rhymes, make sure that you are playing with words, and And sometimes that can even be those sounds, like you were talking about the Raffi song, about predicting the musical sounds.

But as early as age one and even a little bit before, students should be able to make animal sounds and, and clap with you, maybe not exactly on the beat, but they should be interested and eager to engage in that. And that is a developmental piece that really does need to be explicitly taught. Having full conversations with children who babble back to you forms a speaking connection and allows them that connection to be heard and understood.

Even if their language isn't perfect yet, it encourages them to begin to develop their language. And we know that language is an [00:20:00] innate skill that we have as human beings. And so this is the first part. And so with that positive engagement, it starts them off on the trajectory. So I don't think that as reading teachers, we talk enough about that because it is something that is critical.

And you're right. You know, the first thing that we could do is for during new family doctor's appointments is really start to encourage that. I think that that's a really great way to do that. I, you know, just for me as a teacher, I, people always laugh at me, but every time I give a gift, it's always a book every time.

I'm always giving books because I think that that is such a joy that you can share with your child, no matter how old they are really, truly. And so you know, I know that that's like, it's a little bit of an aside, but I don't want to gloss over that so much because I think that it can still be part of our conversation.

And it's something that not very many people [00:21:00] speak about a lot. And I think the other piece where we're kind of diving into all of this stuff is that as teachers, we actually have an opportunity to be prescriptive. We know our students well. And we can partner with parents who knew, know their child best as well.

And we might not have the exact answers, but as partners together, identifying why they're struggling, which area they're struggling with, where they may have a confidence issue, how can we build up their confidence? What would be reinforcing for that? That

piece is critical. And most of the time, what that is, is A connection.

Eye contact. I see you. I see you struggling. I care. You're not in this alone. That's the most powerful thing you can do for any human being who's struggling. And, and we have an opportunity to do that as teachers. But I think that it goes a two way street. And so if you're an [00:22:00] administrator and you see a teacher who is struggling, just like your students might be struggling, and they are reaching out and saying, I need support.

They need eye contact. They need to feel like they are heard and Hey, you're not in this alone. We are all doing this together, but that is powerful and it is prescriptive and it is complicated, but I think it's so important. So I, I so appreciate you bringing this up.

Shannon Betts: I think what you're talking about, Mary, is that moment of reckoning. I mean, that's where I always started with the students and then the parent conferences, because a lot of times those. The fourth grade parents or someone to me, nobody's ever really told me much. I can't read. I mean, they really weren't aware, you know, because the child might've been getting just seas and kind of being passed along, like you said.

And so before we even can start that intervention, we do need to have that moment of reckoning. And I really, that's [00:23:00] why I always like that map test because it kind of has that colored graph where you can, you just really can't argue with that colored mountain and say, okay, this is where you are.

That's not where I'm going to leave you. We are going to get further than this, but we have got to at least note and be honest about where you are, because this tells me exactly what missing skills you need. And this is what we have to work on. We can't get to here if we don't do these things. And also at that level, those students do need to be really told and understand that they're going to have to work harder than their peers to catch up.

And once they kind of get that and they get a taste of that success, like I said, they are willing to do put in that work and put in that time. I had this one student, Michael, I'm just remembering he was in fourth grade and he was on a kindergarten level. I mean, he could not read like. C, like VC words, like two letter words.

And I had that moment of reckoning with him and he went home every single day. I was really lucky to do my intervention in the library that year. And [00:24:00] so, and I make good friends with my librarian, like always. So they'll give me special permission to get lots of book checkout. And he would take home two books every single night and read them to himself like 10 times, 14 times, 15 times.

And I did car duty too. So I'd get him out of the car in the morning and say, how many times did you read those two books? I've read one 11 times at one 13 times. And he'd go past the AR test and he'd get two more the next day. He'd get two more the next day. And he'd get two more the next day. And this kid, he's the most I've ever had growth.

He almost got to a fourth grade level. He made almost four years of growth in one year, but that is because he worked his tail off.

Kionna Squires: I, I believe, I believe every bit. I'm such, I was just talking to one of my teachers about, and it's funny, you guys call it the, the reckoning moment, because I was also, I was telling her about, I said, before we start these small groups, before we start planning, You're gonna have to talk to your class about the data and she was like, what do you mean?

I said, you're gonna have to have a transparent [00:25:00] conversation with your students. You know, you could do it individually. You could do like a data meeting where, you know, you take names off and things like that, but. Everybody has to be on the same page about where we are as, as our reading skills so that we can have a motivation as to why we need to work hard in our class, why we need to try to control our behavior so that we can learn different things.

And one of the things that I noticed with her and several other teachers that I've talked to were. They feel like students are not going to be able to handle that kind of conversation. They feel like it's too embarrassing. It's too, it's too much of an invasion of privacy. But I've told, I've talked to them about, you know, We don't want to have students go on through the, through the year, not really knowing where their skills lie.

Because then when we start teaching these different things, they're not going to understand why we're teaching it to [00:26:00] them. They may disengage, they may feel disconnected, but when we give them the real piece as to why we're going over the, this, these, the coding skills when you're in the eighth grade.

They begin to, to buy into what you're doing versus you not telling them about the data or not being honest about it. And then just trying to teach them and put these intervention plans in place without really involving the student.

Mary Saghafi: I was going to say, I think that you are so spot on it. Don't forget that kids are very perceptive.

If they think that you are trying to give them baby work. They get mad because you're giving them baby work. You need to give them the reason behind what they're doing and give them that kind of just almost like mutual understanding. Like I'm not going to sugarcoat this for you because I care about you and you're big enough to handle this.

And because I know you are, [00:27:00] I'm going to share it with you. And I find. Almost every single time. I've never had an opportunity where this didn't happen, but they rise to the occasion and that's really what it comes down to. So I so appreciate you saying that. And I know that that the first step in helping struggling readers is really looking at your data.

And we preach this all the time, but I think it is an irritation. Teachers hear data that we're data all the time. And it's like, oh, we got another data meeting coming up. But I think that a lot of that is like a defense mechanism if you don't understand what that is. And so if you're an administrator and you hear those sighs when it comes to data meetings, It may be because it's a defense mechanism.

They're not understanding it. So it's the same way with your students. I really get upset when there's like a hypocrite hypocrisy in schools where the teachers aren't given the same respect as the students are giving or or how that like measure is expected. [00:28:00] So if you want your teachers to do something for their students.

You need to model it so that they're going to give it and deliver it to their students in the same way. I feel so passionately about that. So, okay, please tell us more, Guru.

Kionna Squires: Yeah, that's, that's definitely what I think about the same thing. And then too, you have to have that same approach when talking to parents, because I hear a lot of, and that's why like, like That's why a lot of parents, they make it to where their students are in the fourth grade, fifth grade, and they've never heard that their student is having an issue with reading.

And that's because a lot of teachers get very nervous when they have to have those conversations with parents and they. They just don't want to deal with it, but it's almost like ripping that band aid off and just having that conversation at the beginning. We all set our boundaries. We all have those understandings and I agree with you.

I have never seen it where [00:29:00] you roll out the year like that and you don't have buy in by the parent. I, I mean, I have seen it where parents, the same way you got the kids eating out your hand. The parents are eating out of your hand saying, what can I do? How can I help them at home? They're showing up to every parent conference or making it so that they can show up on zoom.

I've even had it where they're sending other people in place of them to show up for parent conferences just because they, they now understand how important this work is. And once you get that buy in to me, everything just falls into place after that. So what do you do after you get the buy in? So after the buy in, then we really get into the assessments.

After you've had those conversations, well, of course, you're doing a little bit of the assessments before, but at the beginning of the year, most teachers are getting that assessment data from their screener, which would be their map test or a lot of schools are using [00:30:00] the iReady assessment now as a screener.

But once you have that conversation about, okay, you know, you didn't perform in the green on the screener. Now we're going to do a little more digging to find out what we can do. Then you want to go into those assessments. And the kid, a lot of times kids don't want to do all those assessments because they don't understand the purpose.

But once you've gotten that buy in. Then they're more willing to do those diagnostic assessments that you have to do with them to check for their phonemic awareness, to check for their phonic skills. So then you can begin to make a plan for them. So that's kind of, that's what I do after that, after I get that initial buy in.

Shannon Betts: Agreed you you tell the students very clearly look like I've even shown him Swiss cheese before and say look, this is a whole hunk of cheese, but there's some holes. That's what you're reading is like, and I'm trying to find the holes. So I need you to do your best on every single thing I give you because if you pretend you know it and you [00:31:00] don't like that's going to waste our time.

We don't want to be wasting our time on something you already know we want to be finding the exact things that are missing so that we can get you as close to whatever fourth or fifth grade work that we can.

Mary Saghafi: And not to just click through and go too fast. If you don't know the answer, this is not a race.

This is just, you need to feel sure about your answer. And, and to do that, you might need to slow yourself down. And on the I'm sure many of our teachers know on the map test, if you're clicking through, you get the sloth. And so we don't want to see that sloth. And I think also calling attention to parents as well, when Students are clicking through those tests so fast to let them know that they need to also have this conversation at home so we can kind of bridge the home and school parents want what's best to but having somebody else hold them accountable for it is really important to so I love.

I like to say that too.

Shannon Betts: I agree. [00:32:00] Okay, so you've gotten the buy in and then you've and you did the initial screener. Maybe at the same time or one or the other kind of simultaneously. Then after that initial screener, you're doing more specific diagnostics to kind of hone in on those specific skills that they might be missing.

Well, then. How do you provide that intervention? Like, how can you provide that intervention while still teaching fourth grade and then not ignoring the students? I mean, because that the, the higher grade levels you get, it seems like the wider range of levels you get within your room, like every grade, you're going to have a kindergarten level student, but then everybody else is higher and it's harder every time.

Kionna Squires: So, yeah. So once you've gotten that screener data, yeah. You've been able to analyze it. You want to determine, you know, what kind of profile does this student fit into? Are they a [00:33:00] student who needs more word recognition interventions? Are they a student that needs more language comprehension interventions?

Or are they a student that needs both of those interventions? So you want to be very clear on that. So when you put your students into their groups for your instruction. You know that this group is going to get phonics skills, fluency skills, but this group over here is going to get more of those language comprehension skills.

So you really have to determine where the student falls at for you to know how you're going to roll out those intervention plans. Now the the big million dollar question is how do we make sure that students are getting their grade level content in as well as those differentiated skills and we were talking a little bit before we went live about my 30 30 method and how I talked to teachers about.

If you have a 60 minute block, you just want [00:34:00] to split it down the middle, 30 minutes of teaching that right level content, and then 30 minutes of teaching that small group differentiated content. Now, this takes some very intentional planning for you to be able to navigate both of these in one block, because what that means is you have to truly internalize What is it that the grade level wants me to teach?

I've got to use my scope and sequence to determine, you know, what standard am I teaching? What lesson do they want me to use in my curriculum? And you want to roll that out within a 30 minute time frame. And I know it seems like it's Kind of challenging, but if you follow Anita Archer's explicit model of that scaffolded teaching, you're going to do your I do piece where you're modeling that standard.

You're going to allow for students to do some practice. And then you're going to give them a quick exit ticket at the end of those 30 minutes to [00:35:00] see what they know. When you have a class where there are more students that are struggling to read than there are students who are reading proficiently. You really don't want to spend 45 minutes, 50 minutes, 60 minutes teaching those grade level standards because through your diagnostic assessments, you've already seen that those standards are going to give them trouble.

Your best bang for your buck is to make sure that you're using half of the rest of the rest of your block time to be teaching those foundational skills. So that's when you look at that reader profile and you say, okay, well, this group needs to work on beginning sounds, ending sounds, or maybe they need to work on vowel teams.

While this other group, maybe they're on grade level and they can work on other extensions of their grade level content. So it's really about truly knowing your students and then organizing your instructions so that you're meeting all of those

Shannon Betts: goals. [00:36:00] And you have to do really short lessons for that to work.

And I see some of my the teachers that I know that are at upper grades that aren't doing that level of differentiation, they get stuck in almost these like 50 minute many lessons where they're trying to just like pull teeth to get the students to be able to do that. grade level work and the scholastic news or something.

And it's just so beyond what the kids can do. And I'm, you know, I try to get the teachers to realize like, look, if it's taking them that long to do it, then it's at frustration level. So they're going to need a scaffold or you need to choose a lower level text or do this for a shorter time. Just do it for one paragraph and not the whole passage.

It doesn't have to be the whole thing. It can be something shorter. You're getting that grade level content in there. You can extend it for, you know, maybe a third or two thirds of the class, but you've got to give those other students what they're missing or let the support staff who might be assigned to them.

Kionna Squires: To [00:37:00] be able to use that time. And I think also to just kind of get what's a good word. They get nervous. And the reason why they get nervous is because they're told that they have to follow their curriculum with fidelity, that they have to finish that entire lesson in one day. They've got to get to that assignment at the end.

And that goes back to some administrators just not knowing the research and not understanding that if a student is at frustration level, there's no sense of continuously, like I always say. You know, shoving comprehension down their throat because it's already been seen that it is too challenging for them.

And the research tells us that if they're at that level, we need to go back to those foundational skills. So teachers want to keep their job. And that's why they teach it and they try to make it work, but when they get the information about the science of reading research and what it tells us about how our brains learn to [00:38:00] read, I feel like teachers will be more confident to say, you know what, I'm going to stop right here for today.

We're going to pick back up on your grade level standards tomorrow. And now I'm going to spend the rest of my time teaching you those differentiated skills. It comes down to that, but then it also comes to you. Thank you. teacher comfortability with teaching those foundational skills in the upper grades.

A lot for a lot of teachers, it's just easier to stick with the whole group because we're not trained on how to teach phonics. We're not trained on how to take a student who is in the fifth grade at a kindergarten level and build those skills up. So that becomes another issue that teachers are dealing with.

So it is definitely a very complicated thing to think about how we can fit all of those skills in. But it certainly can be done, but

Shannon Betts: you, you know, so many points go ahead.

Mary Saghafi: I know. No, I love this. I, one of the things that I love hearing you speak about too, and I think this gives permission to a lot of teachers too, is saying I'm an eighth grade teacher.

I can't teach second grade [00:39:00] skills. And I like that. You often say. Well, then don't call yourself an 8th grade teacher, just call yourself a teacher, because your job is to get kids to read. And part of reading is being an expert in your field, and sometimes that means extending your knowledge to understand.

Sometimes you're a 2nd grade teacher who is working on really high level figurative language. Are you saying, well I don't have to teach that because I, I'm not a teacher. No, you're going to help your students rise to the occasion. So if you want to keep talking about that, I will listen to you speak on that all day long.

Cause I love it.

Shannon Betts: I was, when you were speaking, I was remembering we had a guest last season who we were talking about that implementation with fidelity concept. And she gave us a point of thinking of maybe inter implementing with, with integrity. And shifting that a little bit. And what does that really mean?

Because to me, [00:40:00] integrity does mean giving the students what they need, you know, and but you're right. It does require a boldness. And so it is a little bit easier, I think, for those of us who have had some more experience at different grade levels and also more experience in the field that, you know, we know we can find another job at another school if we need to.

And, you know, they're desperate for teachers these days, so we'll get hired. But, you know, you get scared, you know, like you get scared. I've had administrators that, you know, scared me with non negotiable lists and things like that and scared me with bad evaluations and things like that. But you just, you know, like I feel like the students are my bosses.

Not the administrators, you know, and so I, and this and the parents, you know, because they're the stakeholders and I'm promising those parents at back to school that I'm going to help your child, you know, become the best success that I can. And we're in this together. And, you know, that's, I don't know, that's what gives me like, I guess, the fuel to kind of be bold.

And [00:41:00] then what I found through experimentation over the years is that I really only have to be bold, like one semester. And then once I get my mid year math data, everybody's like, you know what, just, just close your door and do what you do. That's because we know you're teaching the kids, you know, but it kind of just takes that one little, like kind of experimentation short term time to just say, you know, can you trust me on this?

Or like, You know, you might be a little scared that they're going to come to your room and catch you doing something like working on funny make awareness with fourth graders and working with picture cards, you know, and it doesn't look rigorous. But but then if you can just do it enough and you, you know, you do it well enough and you do the right things with your students and then the data, you know, proves it and then they, they kind of leave you alone.

Kionna Squires: That's I always tell my teachers your data speaks for itself. If you can show your administrators why going back to the foundational skills are is going to boost your student achievement, you will [00:42:00] always like I got to the point and both of my schools that I because I'm at my third school, but the two previous schools that I was with both of the administrators were like.

No, we know Squires got it. We're not even, like, to the point where they weren't even checking in on anymore because they were like, her data's right. We know what's going on. I even had a in my, I would say, like, my fourth year teaching in Maryland, my principal's boss came down to the school and asked me how I got my students Lexile levels up.

so high and how they were comparable to this. I was on the South side. They were asking me how they were so comparable to the students on the North side. And I was like explicit teaching. I'm explicitly teaching them the skills that they need. And this was even before I was, I learned about all the research and why behind what I was doing, but it just let me know.

And this was also at a time where. I would sometimes be called a troublemaker [00:43:00] because of the questions I would ask and the things that I would, you know, say, well, you know, why are we using a curriculum that doesn't directly teach the standards? Like I would, I would be that person asking those questions.

But then in the same token, I would have, you know, Data where I was showing students were progressively growing in my class, their skills were getting better and better and having students, you know, jump for one year, I had a student just previously jump. And this is what the map test, I had them jump like 36 red points in one year, and, and they were, an exceptionally gifted student. So it just further lets me know. We understand what other people are telling us, but if you're using this structured literacy approach and you're teaching students how to read the way that the research supports, you're going to help students no matter what. So and that's also comes into the equality piece.

You know, [00:44:00] when we say teaching with integrity, I also think about teaching with, excuse me, not equality, but equity. Sometimes all students don't need everything. We've got to figure out the things that they need and give them what they need. And that sometimes means some kids are getting less of something.

Some kids are Getting more of something. So that means what our classrooms look like, it can't be duplicate of what this curriculum tells us to have. Or I had one year where a principal told us everybody on a grade level has to say the exact same words. We have to teach the exact same way. And it was just like, that's not going to help students.

So just knowing your, knowing your research, standing on it is so important and it's, it's empowering for teachers.

Preach, preach, preach. Okay.

Shannon Betts: Can you get into more detail about what you do in that 30 30 time? Like what you do for the intervention? I'm thinking in particular, even for myself, I've got some students that I'm [00:45:00] looping with this year from fourth to fifth, and they still need both language comprehension and word study.

Last year, the teacher only asked me to work on language comprehension, so that's what I did, but I probably should have pushed back and worked on that. A little bit more on Word study. 'cause now they're in fifth grade and the fifth grade teacher's telling me they need both. Mm-hmm. . So what do you do?

Kionna Squires: So if we're talking about word comprehension, Excuse me, just word recognition, making sure in that differentiated time, you're making sure that the students know how to break those words into syllables.

And just that, that process alone will help your older students be able to break down so many multi syllabic words. So just using that time to show them how to identify those vowels, how to break those words into the different syllable types. So I'm doing a lot of instruction that's geared towards those six syllable types for my older students [00:46:00] and making sure that they know how to break any word down into those syllable types and sound them out.

We're doing that at least 10 to 15 minutes a day. And I spend at least so if I notice that I have older students at the beginning of the year, we're spending at least four to five weeks on just making sure we know how to break those words into syllables.

Shannon Betts: And you're doing reading and like encoding and decoding of those syllables, spelling and reading of those.

Kionna Squires: Because as you're as you're practicing reading, we're going to be practicing writing those words. So you're going to read them, you're going to write them. And that's why explicitly teaching the sound to print correlations is so important because there are many ways that we can spell many sounds and if students are not familiar with all those different ways, they're not going to be able to identify them in the words that they're reading.

So if we're teaching them how to break down those [00:47:00] words while reading, we have to make sure that we're spending time to, to teach them how to spell those same words. Another thing that I make sure that I do in reference to word recognition for my older students is making sure they understand those prefixes and suffixes, that morphology piece of the word recognition wrote.

And because some of our students are pretty good with fluent, they can read for the most part. They're sounding out those short vowel sounds. They know how to add in the vowels, the, the long vowel sound. What we're seeing sometimes with our older students is they're not able to break down those multisyllabic words that they're seeing in their academic classes, their science classes, their social studies classes, math classes, and a lot of that is because those words have those affixes in them that they're not familiar with.

So if I have students that need that kind of practice, we're working on that each [00:48:00] day. I have them pronouncing those prefixes, suffixes, as you said, spelling. So that reading and spelling go hand in hand. So if we're practicing reading them, we're practicing spelling them. I will usually give them about.

Two to three new affixes a day and we're using word banks to be able to build new words with those affixes and prefixes and really being able to practice the definition and building these words into sentences that really is, I mean, extremely helpful for our older students.

Shannon Betts: And then encouraging them to work, you know, like I've built them a resource library at our school with a lot of high low books, you know, like where it's got the high maturity level, but low reading level for those students and I'm making them check out every time they come to my resource room so that they can get this experience with reading these things.

And they look more like chapter books that their peers are reading, but it's got easier access text and [00:49:00] I'm, and I'm like that student that I had years ago, Michael, who had to read all those books every single night. That really is building that fluency and having them apply that. you know, morphology that you've taught them and that's a little vacation that you've taught them.

Kionna Squires: Absolutely. And, and another way that we can make sure that we're kind of honoring our older students is making sure that their codable texts, we're having them practice these syllable skills are equivalent to the things that they're interested in. So I definitely like to use the moon dog at home series.

Shannon Betts: Those are some of the ones that I bought and put them in that library.

Kionna Squires: Because they're just more, you know, they're better than the. I always, when I think about decodable readers, I immediately go to the Bob books. And I think about, you know, sat on cat and pat like smack, you know, those types of sentences.

And we know that if we give our older students those kind of books, they're going to immediately say, what?

Shannon Betts: Is no, but Moondogs has like that cool team. Tam. Yeah.

Kionna Squires: Yeah. [00:50:00] She's cool. It's a little, you know, a little more relevant to them. And like you said, it's easier to, it looks like a chapter book, but it's decodable for them and it'll match the skills that you're practicing with them in those small groups.

So it just all works out together where they're getting that explicit teaching, but then getting that explicit practice and you're just continuing that with them until they feel. You know, fluent and confident enough to take on those, and I, and I always say to take on the language comprehension piece, which doesn't mean that those skills get taught separately, but we just know that students who need that extra help, the priority has to be building those word, those word recognition skills, just as much as we build those language comprehension skills.

Mary Saghafi: Yes, yes to all of these things. And I love that you and Shannon have these like, You know, common decodable texts and things like that. We can link to those as well. The [00:51:00] Moondog series, cause I actually have not used those ones yet. So I'm gonna have to take a look. That sounds great. The other thing I love that you speak to on your platform, especially Kiana, is that you talk about what it's like to have the pushback and how to be strong and bold.

And so can you talk a little bit about what that, what pushback can kind of look like and feel like, and how can you kind of overcome those feelings? About teaching foundational skills and feeling like I'm doing right by my students. I shouldn't be punished for this. So yeah, just, just share a little bit about how you chat with teachers about that.

Kionna Squires: So, yeah, so as I told you guys, I'm, you know, I was always called the troublemaker because at the staff meetings, I was asking questions like, you know, why aren't we having PDs about how to teach the standards? Why aren't we being trained on how to modify the curriculum so that it can be accessible to all students?

Why are we putting fidelity over equity? Why aren't we giving, why aren't we allowed to teach [00:52:00] small groups in foundational skills if that's, You know, if that's what they needed. So those are always the questions that I had, but the way that I kind of overcame that with my administration was like what you guys mentioned before, using my data, my data was speak for itself, and it would show administrators that hey, Maybe she does know a little bit about what she's talking about.

Maybe we do need to kind of see what's happening in her classroom, which is why I think, you know, my principal's boss came down to see me because they needed to see what was going on. You know, she must be doing something different. So I always encourage my colleagues around me, if you have those kind of questions where you're just wondering, how do I help my struggling readers?

Why isn't there any support when it comes to response to intervention? Why do we have students that are struggling to pass the MAP test, but they're all on a roll? If you're asking questions like that, it's [00:53:00] definitely time for you to dig into that research, become an expert at that research. And then become an expert at implementing those structured literacy practices so that you can use that to fuel these conversations with your administrators.

I have a I did a post about having tough talks with your administrators about Foundational skills and just making sure that number one, you understand that administrators have a job to do. Someone else above them are telling them, you know, what they need to do, but in the same token, because we're the experts of structured literacy, it's our job to educate.

You know, people who are not sure of how to teach reading and that sometimes includes our leaders. So, you know, understanding that process and then having solution. So coming up, if you're going to say something to your administrators, you need to already have what. assessments you're using to to [00:54:00] back up the statements that you're saying.

If you're saying students are struggling to read, what assessment data are you using to back that up, be able to provide that, as well as provide how you're doing your interventions and what that looks like in your classroom. As long as you can provide that explanation I really haven't, I have seen it The teacher will change the culture of the school versus having to keep dealing with things.

Because a lot of times I, I hear people say, I just, I don't want to, because I know no one is going to listen to me. I don't want to walk the boat. I don't want to say anything, but I've noticed that the more you speak up. The more people start to listen, and you may not see changes within that first year, but next year you'll start, you know, seeing administrators saying, Hey, can we talk to you about what kind of curriculums that we should pick now you become you set yourself up as the leading expert for literacy and now they're going to lean towards you and your thoughts [00:55:00] versus.

just doing, you know, whatever they thought. So positioning yourself as that thought leader in the building really is a great way to push back against those, those feelings that you can have when administrators are pushing back on you. But then also sometimes you can encounter pushback from your colleagues especially around certain mindsets.

So like we mentioned before, you'll have teachers that Either explicitly say or through their actions, say things like students are always going to do poorly because of where they come from, you know, where they live at what kind of parent support they have and being around colleagues like that really can change.

They will challenge you when you start to do these structured literacy practices. I know it was so funny, but when I was in kindergarten it was October and I'll never forget I had someone ask me, why wasn't [00:56:00] I teaching kids how to read sentences yet? And I was saying to my colleague, well, you know, my babies are still trying to learn the sounds and we're still building up how to write their letters and they were like, no, by now they should be already reading sentences and just having to.

Navigate that mindset, because that was a balanced literacy mindset, of course having to navigate and push through that can be a little bit challenging, but the same thing with administrators, you kind of push back with your data, you show people how the new research, well it's not new, but how the research has told us to guide our instruction I share podcasts with people so that they, I'm, I'm not just saying this research.

They're hearing it from other people. And last year I even turned my classroom into a model classroom where people could just, I told people they could just come into my classroom and people would just stop by all the time and just look at how I was instructing my students in, in [00:57:00] small group, but then also in whole group.

And when you do that with your colleagues, People start to not, and not that you can change people, but people start to think differently about how to approach struggling readers. And you start to see people say things like, okay, well, I know that this student is not able to read grade level textbook.

What can I do to help them overcome that? That's a, that's a great mindset shift instead of saying things like, well, this is just too hard for them. I don't know what they're going to, you know, stuff like that, helping teachers kind of change that mindset. So those are the kinds of pushbacks that I would get from colleagues.

Just like I said, just mindset, refusing to want to teach in small group because they didn't believe in it, things like that. But again, sharing that research, sharing what works, showing people what works really helps aid in. Overcoming those barriers with pushback.

Mary Saghafi: I am so [00:58:00] positive that our listeners are like, yes, thank you for being action oriented and telling us what to do, because I think that these steps are, are the next critical piece.

I think there's plenty of people that really want to do this. But these action steps that you just shared. I, I love that. I think that's fantastic. So, okay, so let's say you're there. You're, you, you're in your second year of really trying to change the culture of your school. And there are some older teachers who are now willing to do this and they're, they're willing to spend the class time meeting the students where they are and filling the mind gap.

So where is the rigor? How do they do it? How much time is spent in intervention versus grade level and, and what does this all look like? Is the, is the teaching energy available? Because I also know sometimes the feedback that we didn't share, but it's often saying, they don't pay me enough to do this.

I'm not spending extra hours doing this. I need this. Yes, fair. Totally fair. It is. [00:59:00] It's an unforgiving job. It is, it, it asks and asks and asks of you. So, so tell us how can a teacher balance all these needs in one room? How do you answer these questions?

Kionna Squires: So the first thing that we talk about is being transparent about this work is not easy.

And I think as a teacher of the older students, you have to come to grips with that kind of mindset that some of the things that you do, you may not get paid for. Right. But the way that you're getting paid is knowing that you are correcting or not correcting, but you are helping students to avoid things like the school to prison pipeline and you are helping to diminish things like poverty.

And whereas we can't necessarily put a price on that. That is what should be, you know, guiding you and taking you through this work is knowing that I'm changing [01:00:00] society. And the more that I perfect my craft, the more that I'm offering effective reading lessons to my students, the more That I'm going to change the not only the culture in my classroom, but the culture of my neighborhood and eventually the culture of America.

Right? So that's the first like that mindset shift is like the biggest piece that teachers have to kind of, you know, deal with. But once they, you know, once we make it past that barrier. Then the understanding has to be that there has to be some intentional planning done to get all of this, to get all of these things in.

If we're saying that we need to spend at least 30 to 40 minutes on grade level material, we need to make sure that our introductions and our modeling is rigorous, where it's aligned to the standards. Because I see a lot of teachers modeling, but it has nothing to do with the standards. [01:01:00] So if we're going to ask students to perform rigorous tasks that are standards aligned, we have to make sure we're planning out a introduction or a modeling that that allows for that.

We have to make sure that we are giving students that ample time to practice. We can build our rigor when students build that automaticity and can practice and practice and practice and get more strategic and more strategic. And then you'll see that, okay, at first I used to have to offer a lot of scaffolds when I taught my standards.

But now, as I help students practice and practice and practice, now I can get up to the rigorous, more complex, you know, skills and tasks that I couldn't do before. So that's where you're going to find that rigor, but then also students. Learning the skills that they need in small groups is rigorous as well, because it's not easy to be practicing sounds and spellings when you don't know them.

That is very rigorous. [01:02:00] It's rigorous to remember all the different sounds that may go or all the different spellings that may go with the sound. So when we're asking teachers to put up things like sound walls and asking students to kind of remember each sound, that is extremely rigorous, you know, for the students and for the teachers.

So when we think about where are we going to get the energy to provide, you know, grade level tasks and, and those additional enrichment, it just comes in planning. We have to spend our energy on intentional planning, but then also we have to spend our energy on advocating for more planning time, because many times we're told that we've got 90 minutes of planning time or 45 minutes of planning time, but then.

That time is being used for meetings, instead of allowing teachers to be able to plan out what their, what their modeling lesson looks like, what their practice lessons looks like, what [01:03:00] their exit ticket looks like, what, what are the things that they want to do in small. Teachers need time to be able to plan for that and If they're not given that time, they're not going to have any energy to try to do this after school or on Saturdays or Sundays.

It's not going to happen. So if we're going to balance it all, it's about us planning, but then it's also about us advocating for the planning time that we

Mary Saghafi: need. Louder for the people in the back.

Shannon Betts: That's how I feel about it. I got really intentional. I was. And I was stuck in grade level meetings pretty much three or four days out of the week and only had one day dedicated in my classroom each week to really plan.

And so I had to get really smart with my, my classroom management and make it like a really self run classroom where I gave a lot of the busy work to the students, you know, like where I would have a responsible student right down the behavior points each day or I'd have the student. [01:04:00] You know, put the papers in alphabetical order for me or just things like that so that I could maybe use my class time or I used a lot of morning work time to do my lesson planning.

And I trained my kids to be really quiet during my work and interrupt me so that that ended up becoming my planning time versus my actual planning time where they were at specials, but I was in. Meaningless data meetings, not meaningful data meetings, but that's another topic for another day.

Kionna Squires: Oh yeah, I agree.

Putting those routines in place is so important.

Shannon Betts: That freed up a lot of energy for me.

Kionna Squires: It's almost like you got to run your classroom like it's a well oiled machine. Like, I don't want to say like a factory, but it does have to go to a certain rhythm where you can easily go from your whole group to your small group.

People, you have students that have classroom jobs. They're able to manage what's going on at the table. So you're able, it is a lot that goes into this [01:05:00] planning piece, but it just requires us to think smarter and do things and not do things the harder

way. Well, you talked at the beginning of the episode about that teacher that might need to have that grade level data conversation.

And I would do that too. I was, I was able to do it in like a no blame, no shame way. And what that did is that made all the students want to help each other, you know, where they got the equity, they got the equity piece, like, Oh, bespects need to spend more time with this person to help them get closer to where that person needs to be.

But then she's going to encourage me and give me attention in other ways, you know, and I even had one year I did. 80 percent mastery with all my reading groups. And I said, we weren't going to move on to the next skill until everybody in the reading group got 80 percent mastery. And that made the reading group very motivated where they were tutoring each other and they were all the same level, but some kids, you know, caught on a little quicker and they were tutoring each other so that they could move on to the next skill.[01:06:00]

So there's ways you can do it.

Mary Saghafi: I love that. Yeah, that's great. Okay, Miss Kiana, what else would you like to share with reading teachers while we have you on air?

Kionna Squires: Okay, so I definitely want to make sure that, you know, as we said before, we're thinking about how we can involve our parents in this process of teaching our students how to read.

Find ways to really engage your parents in this process. Think about host literacy nights. If that's not something that your school does, see if that's something you can get a special pass where you're just doing a literacy night, you know, for your parents and once you start doing one that everybody's going to start doing one.

Think about Also creating videos for your parents. One of the things that I did as we were, as I was helping my parents learn about, you know, helping their students develop that orthographic mapping process. I was teaching them about the Elk and [01:07:00] Boxes and how do we, I was making videos about how we move the you know, the manipulative and then how we Feel the letters in the box and how we, I explicitly made video so that they can feel included in the learning process.

Also promoting language and literacy, not just at school, but in your personal life too. Like if you're on social media, use that platform to talk about language and literacy. If that's something that you're really passionate about and you want people to really get involved. Talk about it everywhere.

When you're at a family reunion, talk about how language and literacy can help out. You know, the more we get parents involved in this process, the more that we can help our struggling readers. And in the same token, I want us to release the fear of being scared to advocate for our struggling readers.

Just like you all mentioned before, and not that we always want to think about this, but we do have to put it in [01:08:00] perspective. There is a teacher shortage. We are in need right now. We are the experts. So if people are not listening to us, then we need to go to places where they are listening and get into positions where they are listening.

We need because making sure that our pre K's and our daycares are are teaching those foundational skills. That's something we've got to advocate for. And the same thing in our schools, we have to advocate for school leaders to understand how important teaching literacy in a structured way is. If we're at a school where, you know, people are following that wait to fail model.

We've got to advocate and we've got to say something about it. Like no more other days of just saying, I'm here to get my paycheck. I don't want to rock the boat. We're not going to solve the illiteracy crisis by being timid. If I could just say, like, we've got to get loud and bold. And then understanding that.

We are the barrier [01:09:00] between our students being successful in literacy, and the more knowledge that we know, and the more experience that we have, the more that we can help any student, no matter if they're in the fourth grade, 12th grade, and having that knowledge is going to change the world. So we've got to make sure we, we, we've got a handle on that.

And then lastly, do not I think that children's behavior is an indication as to why they don't want to read having, like Shannon said, having a very tight classroom management system can really free up the ability for your students to want to learn, but. Don't just think that students are just misbehaving because they don't want to.

There are routines and structures that we have to put in place for our babies to feel safe enough, to feel vulnerable enough to want to participate in our reading classrooms. And there's a lot of work that has to be done with that. So in addition to [01:10:00] mastering our content and advocating for our students, we have to be able to tap into that social emotional side of our students and understand that they can really...

And if you are a reading teacher who is interested in, you know, starting your small groups, but you don't know what to do with the other students, I am having a free workshop at the end of this month so that you can learn about how to, how to set up those routines and those procedures in your class to be able to run those small groups.

So if that's something that you're interested in, I would love for you guys to sign up for that workshop in my bio. It's going to be on the 31st and I'd love to have you.

Shannon Betts: We'll be sure to share your social media information on our show notes.

Kionna Squires: Awesome. And I always thank you guys for [01:11:00] supporting me and come.

You guys were at my last workshop. You were at my meet and greet. So I really do appreciate that.

Mary Saghafi: You do a great job and it's fun. And I think that people Just kind of feel at ease with you. It's you, you make these hard topics seem manageable and reasonable and, and it is, and it's inspiring. So thank you so much for the bold work that you do too.

It's so fun. And I'm sure we're going to collaborate some more with you too, because this is great, but we'll definitely be happy to share your workshops and things on our platform.

Shannon Betts: Absolutely. And thank you for that last note of what you said, because I think it's so important that it's a vulnerable thing that we're asking these older students to do because they've been, they really have been trapped in that cycle of failure for many, many years and have been passed on through the years, not being on grade level.

And so it's so important to build that relationship with the students so that. You know, so that they do trust us and then they'll say, I can't, I [01:12:00] don't understand this word or this, this sound and this sound sound the same to me. Can you help me with this? And once we, it's very important to set up that relationship in that very early stage, like we were talking about with that moment of reckoning and when we're doing that data review piece before we start the intervention, because we're asking the students to do hard work.

Okay. Cognitively, but hard work emotionally too, because we're asking them to trust and actually hope and hope is sometimes, you know, it's like a thing with feathers. It feels really, feels really elusive sometimes.

Kionna Squires: Yep. Absolutely. Especially when they've been told by other teachers that they would get the help that they need and then they don't.

Shannon Betts: And then they get, they get jaded. Yep. And they're cynical and they're like, why should I believe you,

Kionna Squires: you know, what do you have for me? How are you going to teach me? What, you know, what are you going to offer? That's different. Why we keep reading about the same types of stories, the same kind of people.

Shannon Betts: So they've gotten the main idea [01:13:00] lesson.

They've gotten the main idea lesson since first grade. Yeah. It's not that they can't do main idea.

Kionna Squires: Definitely something else. I definitely and that's when teachers truly have to tap into student interest. What do the students like? What other things that are motivate them to want to learn? How can you bring in their voices, their experiences?

Their home language, because as we're, you know, teaching students about the academic language that they use, that still doesn't disregard the language or, you know, how they speak at home. So we want to bring that into their reading classes too, so they understand that this work is to help. Expand their knowledge and better themselves.

And not just, I'm just trying to, you know, sometimes people just say, I'm just trying to get you to college. And some kids don't resonate with, you know, things like that, but they would better resonate with I'm trying to build who you are. So you can, you know, share your story with the world. Kids will listen to that.[01:14:00]

Shannon Betts: It's a good place to stop. Thank you for joining us in the reading teacher's lounge. You fit right in. You were a literacy soul sister with us.

Kionna Squires: Definitely. It was good. I'm glad because I always told y'all when I hear that we're Literacy Soul Sisters in Atlanta. I'm like, oh,

I'm in Atlanta.

Mary Saghafi: You are too, because it's always nice to. Have these big discussions with you. I think it's really powerful work. So thanks again.

Shannon Betts: And we appreciate all of you listening. I know what Kiana shared today resonated with so many of you. So reach out to us on social media, reach out to her as well at Dell Literacy Lady.

We'll link to it in our show notes.

Kionna Squires: Thank you. Thank you.