%20(9).png)
Reading Teachers Lounge
Reading Teachers Lounge
June 2025 Bonus Episode: Reading Science to Classroom Reality
This episode is only available to subscribers.
MORE Reading Teachers Lounge
Subscribe and receive ad-free content and exclusive bonus episodes!For the June 2025 bonus episode of the Reading Teachers Lounge podcast, Shannon and Mary discuss the article "Lost in Translation? Challenges in Connecting Reading Science and Educational Practice" by Seidenberg, Borkenhagen, and Kearns.
The article explores why the science of reading often fails to transform into successful instruction. The most significant gap is what the authors refer to as "translational research," which explicitly connects laboratory findings to practical classroom applications. Looking toward solutions, we discuss the authors' recommendations for cross-disciplinary collaborations, developing a true science of teaching, avoiding a narrow focus on phonics, investing in early learning, ensuring research applies to diverse populations, and examining existing instructional systems.
Join us in understanding why teachers have struggled with conflicting directives and why it's not their fault they've had to piece together approaches without clear, research-based guidance. The goal isn't "balanced literacy" but "balanced learning"—providing each student exactly what they need, when they need it.
Seidenberg, M. S., Borkenhagen, M. C., & Kearns, D. M. (2020). Lost in Translation? Challenges in Connecting Reading Science and Educational Practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S119–S130.
LINK TO OPEN-SOURCE RESEARCH ARTICLE:
Lost in Translation? Challenges in Connecting Reading Science and Educational Practice by Mark Seidenberg, Matt Cooper Borkenhagen, and Devin Kearns (2020 ILA Reading Research Quarterly)
Welcome to Reading Teachers Lounge. This is our June bonus episode and for the summer we decided to do something a little different. We're still seeing our clients this summer, but instead of chatting about what we're doing with our clients, mary and I wanted to read some science of reading articles. One article for each month episode, so we'll do one this month in June, another one in July and just talk about it on air with you guys and unpack what we've learned from it and what we can discover by reading the research directly and reading directly from the authors, rather than just sort of talking about how we interpret things in our practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that this comes at a good time too, because the topic we're talking about how we interpret things in our practice. Yeah, I think that this comes at a good time too, because the topic we're talking about today is how to relate the science of reading into actual educational practice, and that's what this particular article is about. It is titled Lost in Translation Challenges in Connecting Reading, science and Educational Practices. Connecting Reading, science and Educational Practices. First author is Mark Seidenberg.
Speaker 1:Who we like.
Speaker 2:Who we love the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Matt Cooper Borkenhagen, also from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and then Devin Kearns, university of Connecticut. So this article will be referenced in our show notes per usual, so you can read along with us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we found an open access copy, so it's not behind a paywall. You just might have to like answer. I'm not a robot or whatever, but then you should be able to get this article in full. Yep, yeah, so it's from Reading Research Quarterly, published by the International Literacy Association, and it's a couple years old. And actually we read it a couple years ago, thinking we might do an episode about it a couple years ago, but it's just sort of been sitting in our idea pile.
Speaker 1:And I think this is a good time to talk about this article now because we've seen, since this article was published in 2020 and we discovered in 2023 but in the two years since we've seen it and also the five years since it's been published, more of the science of reading has been um pushed into the field and because of state legislation, because of curriculum changes, because of like sold a story and some other social media you know other, some other media reports and things like that. But this article is still relevant because, even though the science of reading is becoming more mainstream, there is something still lost in translation, which is what this article is all about. Like you said in the subtitle, it's challenges and connecting that reading science to the educational practice. What are the gaps between that research clump of knowledge and then the teaching practices that teachers are actually doing in front of their students?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think you know just kind of narrowing it down in the abstract. They say that there are three kind of big key points. So the first one would be the need for translational research, linking the reading science to classroom activities, which is something that we talk about all the time in kind of layman's terms and how we're trying to address it in our own practices and then also having those professional conversations. The second point is the oversimplified way science sometimes is represented in educational context, and I think that that's where I see such a big question mark and so much side conversation that kind of dilutes what are we talking about?
Speaker 1:so right we're going to talk about, like phonemic awareness. They talk about it a big thing, like in the dosage of phonemic awareness, research showed that phonemic awareness was important, but then the dosage that is given to students and the amount of phonemic awareness, direct instruction, that's given to students varies and the research didn't actually say how much was right, it just said it needs to be. You know, it's important to it's important to literacy development, and so that's where part of that translation, that translational gap, comes in I I think um.
Speaker 2:The secondary piece that this really kind of like highlighted for me is um there's a lot of noise in the science of reading.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think that the noise is because of the oversimplification. So if we say that, for example, in phonemic awareness we need to match letter sounds and the actual grapheme with the manipulation of sounds for students, people have varying opinions about it because we don't really have good research that's been translated, for what's happening in the classroom, what it actually looks like, how much Right that there hasn't been research developed on the dosage, amount of and how it should be done with students.
Speaker 1:Should it be done kind of embedded in the curriculum? Should it be done as like drills, you know, at the start of the lesson? No research has been done to show like the best approach for it. Just like when we had Wiley Blevins on and we were talking about scope and sequence and he said research has not proven one better scope and sequence over another. They just said it's important to have a scope and sequence that's followed for phonics. Research has shown that. But they've never done that translational research to figure out which one is better. And the authors of this paper say they're approached all the time as researchers by teachers like well, which scope and sequence is best, which curriculum is best? And you know they're saying none of that yet has been done. It just keeps being these findings. You know that. Then they're translated into tactics, like he said, like they said. But the nitty gritty details of how that is applied with students has not been studied and so teachers are still have to do the translational work of that themselves.
Speaker 1:And then let's bring up the third point from the abstract real quick, because we're already getting in the nitty-gritty like we do, but I know that's I thought the interesting third point was just basically saying that sometimes the science is getting like um, really complex and less intuitive as the field progresses, um, and they go on to more details with basically saying, like what's the brain scans and all the you know, an eye tracking, movement and some of the other things that they're employing in the research, that it's not quite as like simple. It's just like teachers doing observational, you know action research with their students and saying does this thing work or not? And so the field is getting kind of abstract and very complicated and so that widens that translational gap, because what they're doing with these brain scans and the probes and things like that is so different than what teachers are doing eyeball to eyeball with students.
Speaker 2:I also, and this is just anecdotal, but for me, especially as a pre-service teacher, the brain science behind it was so obscure to me because I barely understood what it was going to look like in the classroom. But we?
Speaker 1:well, first of all I didn't even get any of that in undergrad. But then I mean remember we struggled in season five just really trying to understand the reading brain. I mean it took us like the whole season to finally get it. And then they said the field is still evolving and so they're still learning some things about it. It's not like a done the body of research is closed and now let's move on. It's things are still being developed.
Speaker 2:Well, and the ability to translate what a brain image looks like in itself is such a complex thing. I mean, like you know, physicians are the ones who are interpreting these images right, or, you know, or people who have phds in in neuroscience and so, um, yeah, no it, which are not educators in the field. So again there's that gap. Yep, and my my expression is always that's above my pay grade. I can assume that a lot of teachers do feel that way, because our plate is full as it is. But let's, let's continue. So the goal of this whole article really is to announce some questions to the greater field of education, to allow the science of reading to be used more effectively in practice and then achieve greater acceptance of the research among educators.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, okay, so let's say-, so that we can come up with a list of best practices. You know like? That's what ultimately should be the goal of, I think, the science of reading research is to come up with the best practices for different types of students.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the things that stuck out to me was okay, what is this translational, you know, research, what does it really mean? And it says reading science does not come with educational prescriptions attached to it, and I think that really kind of gets to the heart of what we're talking about. So science provides empirical findings, explanatory theories, but then the educational practice is really the activities that promote learning in real world settings. So just laying the foundation, what is this? What are we seeking out?
Speaker 1:We're seeking between these two concepts right, yeah, and like we'll say, like, let's use. We're just going to kind of pick on phonemic awareness, because that's a pretty easy one that you know. And so, again, research has shown it's pretty obvious that it's been published in the media and things as part of like the science of reading, kind of you know part of the defining guide sort of thing that phonemic awareness is important. Well then they're saying it's still up to teachers to try to. If they're not provided some sort of phonemic awareness curriculum, then they're just going to try to find activities online and then, okay, there's still not research that's telling us how much of those activities should be done, how frequently are they for every student, or just certain students, like all of that, all of those details that are really important into the application of this and what actually is in lesson plans and then what actually gets done during the school day varies tremendously.
Speaker 2:True, yeah, for a variety of factors, right, so it can also depend on your curriculum, it can? You know there's been a lot of fault in teacher trainings. There's been a lot of fault in curriculum companies not being able to really translate that research into what the teacher is then advised to share with their students. Because we're missing this, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to. I think this is relevant. This is what I underline. I said we know more about the science of reading than about the science of teaching based on the science of reading.
Speaker 1:So how those are and then how those are combined. And then the authors say they're concerned how reading science has been characterized in educational context. It can be oversimplified in ways that slow progress by seeming to sanction practices that are only loosely connected to it. And finally, the science of reading is a moving target because it continues to progress. And they said that the theories of reading that we should be getting from this translational research are addressing.
Speaker 1:I love that they address like kind of the five question words, because I always think about that too, like just simplifying, like like what are we talking about? Who are we talking about? When, how, for whom? And then I think the why is important too. They leave that out. But yeah, um, that's the details we're looking for from the research and they're not provided yet because we have this body of research that says, ok, this, this is important for students, but then they don't share. Well, it's how it, how it's related. Can you know syllabi and things like that? They're getting read by legislators, you know, or getting influenced maybe by lobbyists and things like that. And so then we've seen a lot of states move to you know kind of structured literacy or science of reading legislation, structured literacy or science, of reading, legislation, and there's just then. Then it becomes like all these outside influences that are then sort of prescribing some of these non-negotiables to teachers and again they're not provided the details of of how it really is delivered to the students.
Speaker 2:I remember being, you know, in my master's program 2009 and, you know, trying to even like determine how would I go about questioning and creating some kind of research that could be tested within the classroom setting and the different nuances for each classroom and for each of the student needs in that classroom, and it really it's a daunting task, so it is a big ask, but I think that it is so critical. We, you know, we, we have determined what needs to be done. We, we have determined that we have a deficit in reading in our country. And, you know, I think one of the things that really stood out to me that I did not understand when I was just kind of learning about all of this was, you know, the National Reading Panel was established in 2000. And I think that one of the critical elements was that it established the big five right.
Speaker 1:The big pillars.
Speaker 2:The big pillars of reading and we know that those are all interconnected. But also they are highly relevant to our skilled reader.
Speaker 1:Let's summarize those five real quick. It's phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, exactly.
Speaker 1:So when we talk about them from the National Reading Panel, those were all studied just on an individual level and not on a connected level, and that's true of like how much you know, and then they didn't show how they were all like used maybe at the same time by, like, a skilled reader. They just saw that skilled readers had all of these things. And I also thought it was interesting that they pointed out that, like it's actually comparing apples to oranges, because phonemic awareness is like an awareness thing. I'm trying to find where he explains this because, okay, I found it, it's on page five of the article. Okay, they say phonemic awareness is a type of knowledge, phonics is a type of instruction. So those are not the same thing.
Speaker 1:Fluency is a characteristic of skilled reading, so it's not necessarily a type of instruction. Vocabulary is a primary component of language and then comprehension. That's the goal. So you're comparing all these different fruits and vegetables but trying, but like putting them all together kind of on these pillars. And they said, in worst case scenarios they've actually seen classrooms where they've devoted like equal amounts of time to okay, we're going to work on the pillar, you know, go around this for 20 minutes. Okay, we're going to work on the pillar of vocabulary for 20 minutes, we're going to work on the pillar of fluency. And that is not what the reading panel actually wanted us to do, but they didn't. They also didn't explicitly say not to do that, you know. And they didn't really point out that these were different, different fruits. You know that it's not all the same thing and they shouldn't all be having the same weight. And again, like you said, they're not. They didn't really talk about how they're kind of all interconnected and done simultaneously by a skilled reader and writer.
Speaker 2:Right. So I think what we can we can take from this is a very important but small point. So the National Reading Panel established that there is this body of knowledge right that has been studied. We do know what children need to be able to learn to read successfully. However, it was not a sufficient basis for designing an effective reading curriculum.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think that is the point you know that they're trying to make in this article is that, yes, this is not irrelevant, this is highly relevant. We still need to understand how to put it into practice.
Speaker 1:And, personally speaking, that came out when I was in pre-service training myself, and then no Child Left Behind came out, and then I started my career as a teacher in 2002. And I've seen over the course of the 20 plus years that the pendulum keeps swinging back and forth. Even though that panel was trying to establish these like standardized findings from the body of research that were known, it still translated to very different practices at different times at different schools. I I was at a different districts. I mean it just varied so much where they would say, okay, do only do this thing, okay, now we're going to throw out the rest. Okay, oops, we didn't mean to throw out the rest. We actually want you to do those things, but maybe you should add these things too. But then, no, take away these things. And I mean it's no wonder teachers were just left with whiplash and a lot of confusion.
Speaker 2:you know Well, and I think that when we think of it in that sense, it's no wonder we were looking for some balanced literacy, right?
Speaker 1:Right, that word came out because everybody was just like oh okay, I'll take some balance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, balance would be great. Tell me what to do and so you know when you're getting told what to do is a lot, but I think that this part is really. This is what you touched on before. In extreme cases, it was observed in some first grade reading instruction that this block time was spent on each of the components of the pillars of reading, but the way that they were presented really left a little, only little or limited time for reading and talking about books.
Speaker 1:Right, they can't really be presented in isolation, but that's what was sort of, that's what came about from some places, interpreting that, that panel.
Speaker 2:So one of the questions that I had, and this was this is anecdotal again, but you know we've been horrified by the fact that there have been a number of students who have gone all the way through high school who have stated that they've never read an entire book before.
Speaker 1:I'm sort of wondering if this can be part of it is that we were teaching these in isolation to such a degree and in a way that was just so disjointed that we really lost sight, and I talked about that when we had Shanahan on, because I was saying that even I was guilty sometimes of realizing at the end of the day when I was reflecting on my instruction, like, wait a second, we did reading-like activities instead of reading.
Speaker 1:It was reading adjacent, you know, it was these little isolated skills on worksheets and maybe some dictation and maybe some reading of some words and phrases. But did the students engage in reading real text and writing real text, as Wiley said? Did they put books in their hands and pencils in their hands, you know, and actually write stories and read stories? And if they didn't do that, then I realized my instruction was lacking some, because I needed to at least give the students 15 or more minutes each reading block, the more the better. Engaging in real text, because then they're applying all five of those pillars at the same time, which is what they should be doing.
Speaker 2:And I think that that then leads to this next question and I think that this is really, you know, insightful too and that's the discussion about empirical learning and explicit learning and or statistical learning, where students are that implicit versus explicit instruction and implant yep, engaging and applying what they've learned and reflecting and noticing on their own independently during text reading, and and that's where I I mean really the rubber meets the road, like I know that I'm using these cliches, but I think we talk about it so often that it often gets lost. What are we really talking about? We're talking about a child reading and applying all of these skills so that they are feeling confident and sure in their own abilities to get from the text what is happening?
Speaker 1:but they're also. We can't teach every single phonics rule, every single phonics exception, explicitly. I mean the kids would be in school forever and they wouldn't be then they'd just be focusing on all these rules instead of actually applying them in text. And so what they're saying in here is that, you know, research has shown that phonics is important, especially to like a beginning, like non-reader, we have got to give them some skill in decoding, but then we need to get them just far enough that then they can start self-teaching and adding to their vocabulary and starting to see the exceptions on their own as they engage in real text and as they start to encode on their own and go well, how should I spell this word? And so how?
Speaker 1:But they don't give us enough detail from the research yet. That's what they're saying in this article is we need more research to see, okay, well, how far do we get them? How much do we give them to get them to that point where that then they can do more implicit learning on their own. And we've talked a lot about implicit learning this whole season as we've just delved into our own morphology training and realizing that structure. Word inquiry, you know, is important and beneficial and that you know. We've gotten into discussions on and off the air of like maybe there's too much explicit instruction happening. Now you know, like we're glad that you know, we're glad that you know, science of reading is, you know, filtering into the school districts and things like that, but it's, it's being interpreted in a way that's not differentiated but it's it's being interpreted in a way that's not differentiated.
Speaker 2:I think that so okay. So I'm in a hundred percent agreement and that's what I got out of this too, but I'm gonna kind of take it to some other conversations that we've had this and so when, when we talk about the need for explicit instruction, a lot of times as a dyslexia advocate, I'm recommending explicit systematic phonics instruction that has a multisensory component to it, so that the students that I am seeing and are in the school setting are receiving what they need, and a lot of times we can find from their psychological reports this is something that they need and can we bring it back to the letter of reading?
Speaker 1:Those are the ones that are in the red right so that's like that bottom, like 10%.
Speaker 2:Yep, okay. So so Nancy Young, our good buddy, she, you know, highlights and defines what is it that some students need, what is it that most students need, and that is different at the different extremes of the ladder, and so that's where I wanted to sort of talk about this. So, nancy, and also Pete Bowers, we talked about morphology instruction with. They talk a lot about the need for implicit learning to occur, and I think that we've been really heavy on explicit and systematic, because we're talking a lot about stripling readers and you know the ones that are the ones that haven't mastered it.
Speaker 1:you know that need that explicit instruction, but we're not talking about the majority of the class a lot of times instruction but we're not talking about the majority of the class a lot of times, right?
Speaker 2:And so there is this like kind of back and forth tension between what is enough for one student, what is not enough for another student, and that's the kind of key you know meat of where this article is pointing us. We need to know how much. What is this continuum look like? We need to know how much. What is this continuum look like? What is it that students need to know? How much do they need to know? You and I had a kind of a private discussion in Atlanta and it was such a joy just to kind of chat with her, but you know her expertise in students who are advanced in reading. She's really trying to advocate and say they might not, these students might not need as much explicit instruction and you need to move their instruction and provide them with opportunities for implicit instruction.
Speaker 1:Well, personally, think about your oldest daughter. How would you feel if she was given in first or second grade, when she was already reading, 20 minutes of explicit phonemic awareness instruction or, you know, 30 minutes of phonics work that she didn't need? 30 minutes of phonics work that she didn't need, that would hold her back because she was ready for project-based learning Kindergarten.
Speaker 2:She didn't need alphabetic principle. By age two and a half she had a pretty solid understanding, and I recognize that that is not the case for many students, especially students that I teach and work with, and so you know the dosage and the timing is so critical for how we need to do this, and so having some really strong evidence to support these are the developmental milestones that a student must reach, and being able to track that on both an individual level and then also within the classroom, I think is something that all teachers recognize, and we want to use the data to be able to do that.
Speaker 1:But the actual like how it is actually happening, is often left to the teachers, just like we were saying Right and because there's not enough research to give us the who, the what, the why, the where, the when, right or resources.
Speaker 2:Right, right. There's definitely lack of resources in a number of different places for what you need. So we recognize that local, local schools or at the local level, all needs are really different and the culture of the school is different and being able to know and recognize that is critical. What we don't have is exactly how that's supposed to happen for every single student, and I think that's where you know, and I think that's where you know. Rewind back to the year 2000 and 2003, when we had no child left behind. It was super frustrating. No one wants to leave a child behind. But if you don't have the ability to reach every single child and know and identify what is needed for each of those children, the teacher feels like a failure. And I think that that's what we talk about.
Speaker 1:a lot is like oh, we felt like that in our own career, you know, because I was given so much, sometimes at odds. You know directions. You know that I had to end up doing my own action research with my own students and my own professional learning and reading to try to figure out the best ways to teach reading, and I did leave some kids. You know that I didn't reach and I feel bad about that, you know, and I've only kind of latched on to sort of like the Shannon Betts method of teaching reading. You know, through all of of these years and it's very hard to even describe it to someone else, um, because it is so personal and then it's constantly evolving for me too, like I've added a lot more morphology and I'm doing less like explicit, sound, symbol, correspondence instruction from the get-go, because I'm adding meaning to that and I hadn't done that before. And so this article is just, I think, reiterating to us and then also to the audience, that it's not teacher's fault for being confused and that there is a huge gap in translating the research to practice. And I'm hoping, since this article came out five you know, five years ago that more research has been done in those five years. And we're just, you know, we'll hopefully be seeing that translational research come out over the course of the next decade to see how it impacts curriculums and things like that.
Speaker 1:I think it's important for us to share the table from this article like and explain um the future steps that they recommend, because this wasn't really like a even though it's a reading research quarterly, they weren't actually doing any research on students. They were just sort of kind of summarizing the research that's been done and then showing you know, some patterns and how it's not, you know, it's disconnected from the actual field where it's being applied. Right. So what are some of the future steps that they recommend in relating the science of breeding to educational practice?
Speaker 2:Okay, so what I some of these future steps. The first one is to pursue cross-disciplinary collaborations.
Speaker 2:Right, so that's science professors and brain researchers collaborating with pre-service teacher professors and actually teachers in the field and reading specialists and things like that Well, and I think that what they're really saying is that these teams of people who have this knowledge succeed in employing basic insights about reading learning in ways that can be utilized by educators in the classroom, and that's where I think teachers have been screaming from the rooftops we don't want policies to be developed by people who have never been in the classroom right.
Speaker 2:That's sort of what I gained from this, but so those cross-disciplinary collaborations.
Speaker 1:They also want us to work towards that science of teaching. There's a science of learning and there's the science of reading, and then we also need to get a science of teaching, of what are the best teaching strategies and techniques for certain students when they're at a certain stage and when they're at a have a certain learning need, because that's going to vary across students needs. It's not like, okay, this is the best way to teach and lecture. We know lecture is not the best way to teach, but that would just be saying, okay, lecture is the best way to teach and we're going to do lecture for everyone because the study showed that they need to show kind of the nuances of what are the best teaching techniques for different students.
Speaker 2:Yep, the how of learning, by teaching what needs to be learned, relevant sources of knowledge, and then when learning of a particular kind needs to occur, for whom. Right so so that's what we really want to define. So I I really like that piece. Um, avoid a narrow focus on phonics.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's sort of where it's all kind of been focused on, mainly in the media discussions, you know, and I think that's just because that's an easy one to latch on to. And then, you know, fluency is harder to talk about, comprehension is harder to talk about, but we don't want science of reading to, you know, just be focused only on phonics.
Speaker 2:Right. Number four is invest in early learning, and I think that this is true. We see students who come in with discrepant skills.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially their oral language. Like we cannot. We cannot oversimplify that enough, or that the students need such a large vocabulary entering school so that then, once they do learn to decode, they can connect that written text to the oral text that they already have in their minds, and that's when we see the reading really develop.
Speaker 1:But if they are lacking a huge oral vocabulary, um background knowledge right background knowledge, you know before kindergarten, then they're already starting with some deficits that aren't quite understood a lot in research yet either so, and number five develop a science of reading that applies to all readers.
Speaker 1:I thought that was really important, because they're saying that research we need to look at the um, the brain who is being researched? You know like what ethnic and racial um makeups of the students are being researched? You know, like what ethnic and racial makeups of the students are being researched? And then are certain techniques more helpful? In some understudy groups or individuals from low-income backgrounds. We can't just say okay, well, because it works with this one population and the research isn't necessarily going to be translated to helping a different population.
Speaker 2:Right and that piece is so critical To personalize it Right. And that's, I think, what I was sort of claiming to at the middle of our conversation when I was talking about the localized. Each school has a different localized need and the administrators who are in charge of you know the learning of these students and the teachers who are providing the instruction. They have to have a really strong recognition and understanding of their student population. But then still, what works best for this group of students?
Speaker 1:And lastly, the last feature step they recommend is examining existing systems of learning, and I'm just going to read directly, because I think their words put it perfectly Curricula and instruction can be assessed with respect to whether they are consistent with basic facts about reading and development derived from modern science. Existing systems, from formula curricula to informal practices, should be examined. So what is currently being done should be examined and augmented in ways that move them closer to what we know about how learners learn, because we know that, as kind of new initiatives are put through the pipeline, it's not like teachers get rid of what hours are in their current units of teaching and in their lesson plans that they kind of do every year and the books that they usually use with the students and lesson plans that they kind of do every year and the books that they usually use with the students, and so we need to kind of see what's being currently used and how it's all actually being merged with the new findings that keep coming out and the new curriculum resources that keep coming out.
Speaker 2:Something that kind of just sparked in my mind about this that would be useful for our pre-service teachers, especially coming in. But all teachers is really having a strong understanding of both ends of the spectrum, of what do severe dyslexic readers, what are those deficits that they exhibit? And then, at the opposite end of the spectrum, what are students who are advanced in reading, what are those skills that they possess?
Speaker 2:And if we can really delineate those, we might be able to better examine what comes in the middle and where the developmental spectrum really, you know, kind of exists, and I think that in my own practice that's something that I'm constantly trying to assess through behaviors. I know that this is how you operate too. I think all teachers are looking to this. But coming in, I really had this very confused perspective about both ends of the spectrum.
Speaker 2:The latter, yeah, the dark green and the dark, red, the ladder, yeah that dark green and the dark red and the ladder of reading and writing, as we've mentioned before Nancy Young and if you need a refresher, I highly recommend the new, updated ladder of reading and writing book. And we had Jan Hasbrook on and Nancy.
Speaker 1:Young.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll link to that in the show notes for this episode. Yeah, any other thoughts that you had? Um, like kind of following up with this?
Speaker 1:no, I think it's just. When I was reading this I kept thinking back to, like our season six theme, which was putting it all together, and I feel like that's what teachers are still this echoed. That is, that've seen as we've talked to teachers and also from our own experience in the classroom, that we've had to just kind of like take all the things that were thrown at us and all the resources that we had, you know, within our own personal resources and within the classrooms that we inherited, and struggle to weave it all together into a cohesive instructional program for the students that we currently had each year and that took a lot of brainpower, that took a lot of experience and skill and it was very difficult as a teacher to do all that. And they're saying that on a larger scale. That it's still. That's still part of the problem is that they haven't done research on how to best weave it all together, and so teachers are having to fill in that gap.
Speaker 2:One of the other like highlighted pieces that I took from this was the goal is not balanced literacy but balanced learning, and I think that that balance learning that hits me a little bit, because I think that's what we're talking about. We have a variety of students with a variety of needs and we are constantly, as humans, seeking to find a balance in this, and part of that is really knowing what to do, and we want to be descriptive so that we're giving students exactly what they need. Just right, work right. So that's where this gray area kind of needs more research. So I love this because it's a call to action for the field Yep, and I know that there are many eager researchers out there who are eager to collaborate and you know they are. They're searching.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do be continued. I guess we just want to keep seeing, like where this we need to find, like what, if there's been some translational research being done you know since this article has come out and what it's found or if maybe they're currently working on some studies. That'd be really interesting to find out. Yeah, I would be really curious about that too. All right. Well, this was fun talking with you Different kind of conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, elevated, love it.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us. The Re-Teacher's Lounge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see you next time.