Reading Realities

More Structure, More Freedom: Rebuilding First Grade Literacy feat. Holly Price

• Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz • Season 1 • Episode 4

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0:00 | 24:07

What do you do when the way you’ve been teaching reading for years just isn’t working?

In this episode of Reading Realities, host Rose Else-Mitchell speaks with Holly Price, a veteran first grade teacher with more than 25 years in the classroom, about how she rethought her long-held beliefs about what teaching reading looked like.

Holly shares her journey from enthusiastic trips to New York to learn about the workshop model to the gradual and uncomfortable realization that what she had learned wasn’t actually helping students read. Working across general education, special education, and intervention settings gave Holly a wide lens on a range of student needs—but it was when she saw her students’ writing through the eyes of her principal, she understood change was needed to serve students better. Holly reflects on what it felt like to let go of old routines and embrace instruction in foundational skills and rebuild her literacy block with an explicit teaching of language comprehension, writing, and content knowledge.

References and Resources:

Credits:

  • Guest: Holly Price, First Grade Teacher and Goyen Literacy Fellow based in Vacaville, CA
  • Host: Rose Else-Mitchell, Executive Director of the Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz
  • Produced by the Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz, Rose Else-Mitchell, and Onalee Smith
  • Original music and audio editing by Ross Gentry

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Keywords: science of reading, structured literacy, first grade reading instruction, balanced literacy, phonics instruction, phonemic awareness, literacy intervention, teacher professional learning, reading comprehension, writing instruction, literacy coaching, classroom transformation, explicit instruction, early literacy development, teaching first grade

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Rose Else-Mitchell

Welcome to Reading Realities, a podcast for teachers about what it really takes to change how we teach reading. Each episode, I talk with educators about the instructional changes they're making, what's been challenging, what they're still learning, and how they feel about it. Because the truth is, changing reading instruction isn't simple. It can feel really overwhelming, and no one should have to figure it out alone. I'm your host, Rose Else- Mitchell. I'm the executive director of the Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz, and I've spent my career in education as a teacher, a product and learning designer, and supporting schools and districts and systems around the world. Today I'm joined by Holly Price, a first grade teacher in Vacaville, California, with over two decades of experience in the classroom. In our conversation, Holly shares her journey from the workshop model to a structured literacy approach grounded in the evidence. We talk about what it's like to rethink your practice after many years of teaching, but recognizing that something wasn't working. She starts over building new knowledge for herself and for her students. Holly also shares how she's balancing foundational skills with knowledge building, what's changed in how her classroom is set up and why continued learning has been essential for her. Let's get started. Well, welcome, Holly. I'm so glad you could join us for an episode of Reading Reality. So I'm excited to have you here.

Holly Price

Excited to talk to you.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Well, I was a little bit shocked to read that you've been teaching for 25 years, which made me think that, you know, perhaps you were, you know, five when you started and you were

Holly Price

That is true, Rose. I think I was maybe six. My Spotify listening age is 27, and I'm just gonna stick with that today.

Rose Else-Mitchell

I love that. Oh my God. I I do think teaching does keep you young. So do you want to just tell us a little bit about you've had an interesting journey in in teaching reading. Um, you're now teaching the most important grade, I think. Um I had a wonderful mentor who used to just talk about the extraordinary nature of of first grade and just what can happen from beginning to end. So you are endowed with such an important job.

Holly Price

First grade really is the best. And I remember going through my credential program like five years ago. Just kidding. It was a while back. But I remember the reading teacher, she was a first grade teacher, and she was like, not just anybody could teach first grade. In fact, my principal will not let brand new teachers teach first grade. So it always was put on this pedestal of something I knew very early on that I wanted to teach first grade. And my first teaching jobs, I would get put in second grade. I'm like, oh, but I really want first grade. And when I finally got the opportunity to teach first grade, I just felt like I had made it. It was such a big responsibility. It's by far my favorite grade. I've spent the first part of my year in general education. And then when I had my own children, I went into intervention and then went back and got my special credential and then made it back into the gen ed, once again, but being put in second grade. And then I just had to get back to first grade. So I'm just so happy and blessed to be in first grade again.

Rose Else-Mitchell

When you first started teaching, you were trained in the workshop method, is that right?

Holly Price

It was definitely the balance literacy. My first couple years of teaching, some of the teachers around me were talking about reading and writing workshop. And I just knew that I had to learn more about it. So I had the opportunity to go to Teachers College one summer to participate in the writing workshop, and I stayed on for the next week on my own to do the reading workshop training. And I just it felt magical. I was definitely 100% all into the workshop model. I wanted to learn as much as I could, and that it seemed like a very popular approach. It was what a lot of people around me were doing, and I trusted that that was what would make my students the best readers and writers that they could be.

Rose Else-Mitchell

So what made that not seem like it was true? When when did you have a some sort of realization that it wasn't perhaps working as you had hoped?

Holly Price

No hindsight is 2020, there's that saying, but I remember very early on, I looped with a class from second to third grade, and I had just done the reading and writing training, and we were doing a writing celebration. This was years ago, but I remember it was informational writing. I was super proud. We're supposed to have a little party, and I invited the vice principal to my classroom, and she was so nice and kind. She came, but I will never forget this look she gave me because I saw the writing wasn't good, but they loved it. And I remember that to this day. So I think there were little flags. I wasn't gonna call them a red flag, but there were little flags. But it really wasn't until I um became a special education teacher and needed to help students that were really struggling. And the model at the time was just give them more reading and writing conferences. And it just wasn't working. It was not working. I feel like I wasn't helping these students that needed help.

Rose Else-Mitchell

So what was happening in your school at the time? Was anyone concerned that the students weren't doing well, or did they assume that there would be another solution, or were you left by yourself to try and solve for what should might be the appropriate thing for the students that needed extra help?

Holly Price

I was expected to do extra conferring. If a student needed some help in reading that they felt was beyond like an extra conference, then they were assigned a parent tutor to do a program called Barton, which is very structured literacy. I didn't know that at the time. I wasn't even encouraged to learn about the program because that was like almost beneath me that I was to be used for guided reading and extra conferring. And if they needed extra phonics help, they would go to a parent volunteer.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Interesting. So the parents were the ones who were teaching something that was the basics, if you like. Is that right?

Holly Price

Exactly. And at this time I was in uh a pretty well-off school district, so a lot of those parents could afford private tutoring. Right. And I remember the tutors sometimes would reach out to me and like, you should be doing this, this, and this. And the principal would look at it and be like, nope. So I was like becoming more aware, but I couldn't articulate like why should I be doing more of these things? I remember just on my own finding some decodable texts and starting to use them with my groups, but I I didn't really know the why.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Right. That must have been pretty confusing to have all of those different messages, like parents, students, your principal, other teachers. I assume you went back to New York to have more training. You were obviously getting mixed messages. What else were you taking in and how how were you synthesizing any of that?

Holly Price

So we had staff developers that had at that time come to our school. And I just found sometimes I just wouldn't even go to the trainings because I felt like it didn't apply to me anymore. I was just trying to kind of figure things out on my own. And and it took for me being an intervention and special ed. I feel like if I was in the Gen Ed classroom, I just would have kept on doing the workshop because that's just what I knew and that's what I was being trained in, and that maybe I had to just work harder.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah.

Holly Price

And not necessarily working harder on the the right things.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah, this is making me feel really sad. Um really it's such a difficult place to be in, but you're out of it now. Um, so tell me a little bit about that journey of the realization, share a little bit about that that process and and how you learned that this was also something that applied to general ed.

Holly Price

Well, I might backtrack a little bit, but not too long after going into special ed, I went into autism-specific preschool because my daughter has autism. So I did kind of take a break from uh the Gen Ed classroom, and it was a beautiful experience, but I missed the Gen Ed classroom. And so I got injured the year after COVID, and there was a time where I couldn't be in my classroom, and so I would be assigned to work in different classrooms at my school, and I got to go into a first-grade classroom, and it was just like coming home. I was just so excited. So that next year, I applied to teach in Gen Ed and I ended up getting a second grade position. And of course, I went back to what I knew, which was workshop model, and realizing very early on it wasn't working. So I started to hear about the Emily Hanford podcast. And it was the first time I heard like maybe workshop teaching wasn't the way to go. First, I felt very guilty and like, oh, come on now. But part of me knew because I was seeing that being in special event intervention. So I had to give up what I knew, but it it just was very motivating for me to learn more. So that kind of started my journey into structured literacy and doing some of my own learning. And at the time, it was just like two and a half years ago, but I feel like there's so much now that we didn't even have two and a half years ago. So it was just me finding courses on my own and paying for them and doing a lot of learning and just being motivated by honestly feeling dumb, but I did the wrong thing for so long. It kind of caused me to really like throw myself into learning. And the more I learned, the more I realized how much I didn't know. And that was very humbling. I'm like, I've been teaching close to 20 years at this point. I have two credentials, and you're telling me that I didn't even know that there were two sounds for TH. Yeah. And it took me going to like starting over. And that was very hard. It was very humbling. Like, but I feel like that's a part of being a teacher. Like, you're always gonna have more things to learn. And I found a course on just like the basics of the science of reading with Dr. Holly Ely and Jake Daggett. And for them, like not making me feel dumb and embracing me and teaching me. And I feel like every teacher should feel safe to keep learning and to ask questions when you don't know because we didn't know at the time. And I didn't realize that what I was learning from like workshop model wasn't based on research. It looked good, doesn't mean that it was good.

Rose Else-Mitchell

And it was at a university, and so you kind of hope that you know that's going to be a place where the research is filtering down, right?

Holly Price

100%.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah. How do you feel about it now?

Holly Price

It's not something I would choose to do. And I love learning, but I've learned to always be open to the research, period.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what was the first thing you changed? It sounds like you've done things like, you know, changed your room around physically. You've taught not just small group, but you've taught in more whole group. But what was the first kind of change you started making as you were doing this learning?

Holly Price

I think the first change is pretty normal if you're a K2 teacher, especially, is changing the way that you teach phonics and the foundational skills. So I really put a lot of energy into that. On my own, paid for MZ's Orton Gillingham training so I could really understand and practice and be able to confidently teach those foundational skills. And then now really just making sure I'm addressing both sides of the reading rope, not just the foundational skills, because I think that could be a trap when you're first getting into this work, like phonics, phonics, and only phonics, but no, we have to do so much more. Um, and so really focusing on that language comprehension and the writing, writing about reading in a structured way. So I no longer start with my small moment stories. I teach handwriting. I just feel like I'm definitely more structured. And I used to think of that as being like boring or bad, and I no longer think of it that way. Seeing students succeed is addicting. And when you see students success, they want to do it more. They love writing. And I they don't go off and anywhere in the room and write whatever they want. It's more structured, it's a gradual release. So I'm not like always like telling them what to say, but more structure is giving them more freedom and more independence, if that makes sense.

Rose Else-Mitchell

It absolutely does. And developmentally, we know whether we're talking about routines or you're a parent, parenting, kids want structure, even when they rebel against it. And they need it in a way, right? That's part of creating boundaries and and uh a sense of self. I'm wondering if there's something that you felt sad or disappointed to let go of.

Holly Price

This sounds silly, but one of the hardest things for me to give up was my leveled library because I'd spent so much time putting the dots and the letters, and that just made sense to me. Understand. And I I had my sound wall up. I was teaching systematic sequential phonics, I was moving towards structured writing, but there was something about the library that was just I'm like, but I understand like those yellow dot books, I just know where they go. And now I it took me some time, but it's just making those shifts and and having that grace with yourself. But I I did change around my library, and it's not the end of the world. In fact, I love it even more now.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah. And it sounds like you're a very organized teacher, and you know it's a beautiful physical space. And but I assume you still have a classroom library. I mean, you still you still have books for kids, right? And not just decodables.

Holly Price

Exactly. And I just organize them by different characters and themes and like biographies. So it's still organized. I had to just organize it in a different way, and that took a little bit of time, and it's still not perfect. It I feel like as teachers, it's okay to not have everything perfect all at once. I've had to really let go of that perfectionism.

Rose Else-Mitchell

I mean, I I'd probably say like as humans, it's okay to, you know, not have everything perfect. So it is the human condition that we're always trying to make it make sense. I really loved what you said though about over that there is some over-indexing towards, you know, phonics and phonemic awareness as structured literacy is being embraced. And then where's the time for, you know, this important, really important at a young age development of oral language, a vocabulary while receptive vocabularies are much stronger than our, than our um, our our reading vocabularies, especially at six years old. So talk a little bit about how you're managing to keep that balance. It's a great question.

Holly Price

I schedule it in, I make it a priority. We have a half an hour block for our close reading, followed by a half an hour block with our writing. Our writing goes with our reading, so it really meshes well together. I do a lot of work from with my morning message, for example, around our content where we combine everything. So I don't try not to just teach in silos all day. I try to integrate as much as possible. They love reading different genres. I'm proud that my students know the difference between a folk tale and a fable and informational text and historical fiction, things that definitely students deserve to learn and they shouldn't wait for the upper grades.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah, yeah. They're they're uh they're pretty, they're pretty damn smart and their brains are pretty febrile at that at that age, right? Do you have a do you have a moment with a student or with a parent or family that you know was was a a real aha for you around how the change was landing in your classroom, in your community and in your school?

Holly Price

I think of um a few years ago when I was teaching second grade, a student, so sweet, such a hard worker. But she came to me like just not knowing a lot of basic letter sounds. Um, and I was really learning more about structured literacy. And sometimes I felt like I was sort of spaghetti at a wall, just trying things. But the more that I committed myself and implemented practices, like the more results that I could see. And I just took a picture of her when I was at the beginning of that year. We were doing a small moment stories workshop, writing workshop. And then I switched to more structured writing, structured literacy, and the difference between September and April, like she didn't write anything in September. And then to April, that she was writing a paragraph and wrote me this thank you note that Ms. Price, I couldn't read at the beginning of the year, and now I can do so many things. And I just think of that as like such a motivator that had I stayed in the practice of what was familiar with the workshop model, I couldn't have got her to where she was. And she still had more to go, but it was just like a stepping stone and it's so satisfying, like really teaching a student to be able to read and write, not just getting them to think that they're a reader or writer, which I felt like workshop was good. It was like, oh, this looks great. They look like they're reading and they think they're reading, but uh sorry, you're really not.

Rose Else-Mitchell

That is such a such a great point, Holly. I think part of the attraction and the magic, I think, is this idea, which is an important notion for children as they develop across any of their schooling, which is a notion of self-concept that I am a learner, I am a reader, I am a mathematician. You know, those kinds of things have real value. But it's almost as though we were tricking them. You know, it's like you are, but not really. And some of them were, of course. I mean, you but I think you've hit on something really important, which is the evidence, right? And one of the things that is so meaningful to me about what structured literacy asks or, you know, the evidence-based practice that we're all embracing a little more is, as you said, the role of gradual release, where the teacher is modeling and really actively teaching, but then when students are owning. And whether that is oral production or written production or reading, it's evidence on an ongoing basis of of change. Are there other kinds of evidence that you look for that tell you that, you know, beyond sort of classic screening assessments and progress monitoring assessments, but that tell you that students are succeeding?

Holly Price

It's the buzz in the room when they're partner reading, it's the excitement when we're writing and they're reading their writing back. It's it's just those little things that you see on a daily basis that's like the evidence for me.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah. What about what about their families? How do you how do you talk to parents changed?

Holly Price

Absolutely. And I like to hold a parent literacy night at the beginning of the school year to really teach them how I teach reading. Um, that I don't want them guessing, that I'm not just gonna send home a bunch of words for them to memorize, why I don't do the pattern books while I like to send home decodable text without pictures, for example, just so they understand because it has changed. And I think parents want to help their their child, but sometimes they just don't have that information and they're helping them be what I call gorilla guessers instead of dragon decoders. So you have to explicitly teach the parents. But I'm gonna tell you, there's so much power learning about how people learn. And if students are not paying attention, it doesn't matter what you're doing. And in first grade, we know it's a struggle to get everyone to pay attention. But if I can get 30 friends in my room to do our phonics routines, it's because I've been learning about the science of learning. That's how.

Rose Else-Mitchell

So I one of the things I think's exciting about learning science is reflecting on your own practice as a learner as well, and things that you might have done your whole life and how much you might be compensating. Um, I have ADHD. So I know, but I I was uh only recently was an adult diagnosed. So you start to understand behaviors that you had and how you learned, how you completed assignments. And that in itself is interesting as you think about teaching and working with other adults as well as of course with kiddos. What have you learned about your own learning?

Holly Price

Well, I need a lot of repetition. And it's true because we forget like 90% of so yeah. If I benefit from it, of course my students would. And just building in like intentional retrieval practice has been a game changer. It would help me. So of course it's gonna help students.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yes. And of course, that isn't different from the science of reading. Obviously, that's part of what the whole basis of multimodal teaching around graphene and phoneme correspondence, right? Is the repetitions and the transfer. So yeah, it's it's not another thing, it's connected.

Holly Price

Exactly. And that's what I'm in learning. It's it's not another thing. It makes our jobs easier and it just it's benefiting everybody.

Rose Else-Mitchell

What's something that you might tell a teacher who's listening today something about what you learned and and what they should bear in mind?

Holly Price

Keep going, always ask questions and find teachers to collaborate with. This profession is too hard to be on your own island and it shouldn't be competitive. And I'm not gonna lie, sometimes you can be in at sites where it might feel that way, but surround yourself with people that want to grow and learn more because there's always new learning and ways that you can make your instruction even better. Invite someone to listen to a podcast and talk about it. There's so much out there, it's little simple things you can do, but that's what I would say. Never stop learning and find teachers to collaborate with.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah, it can be lonely, right? So I love that you have that and you found that. So before I let you go, what's um what's a book that you might recommend to a colleague or a friend?

Holly Price

So this year, the number one book I've recommended again and again is Rock Your Literacy Block by Lindsay Kemeny. It was such a game changer for me. Lindsay's in the classroom, she teaches first grade. She was able to break down exactly what she does in her schedule in a very teacher friendly way. And for me, it helped just fine tune my routines. And this summer, maybe I'll read like a cheesy romance novel, but that usually waits till the summer.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Yeah, exactly. I'm a big Jennifer Egan fan, so I think she's a perfect summer read. It's been so nice talking with you and hearing your story. Thank you for sharing it.

Holly Price

T hank you, Rose. Thanks for having me.

Rose Else-Mitchell

Thank you for joining us today for this episode of Reading Realities. And thank you again to Holly for sharing her story so warmly and so openly. There's so much in this conversation that reflects what we know from the research, the importance of explicit systematic instruction, but also the role of knowledge, language, and practice in building strong readers and writers. What stands out in Holly's story for me is that this work isn't just about adopting a new strategy or the research. It's about rethinking your own long-held beliefs. And that can be confronting. Being willing to start again from the beginning and continuing to learn, even when you're deep into a teaching career. Being a lifelong learner, engaging and reflecting on your practice, and being intentional about your changes. If you're listening and navigating your own shifts, we hope this conversation gives you something practical as well as the inspiration to keep going. If this episode resonated with you, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And share it with a colleague or a teacher in your life who might be on this journey too. As we're building this community, it would be really great if you could take a moment to rate and review the show. It helps us reach more educators doing this important work and share what you need. We'll be back soon with more conversations from educators learning and growing in their classrooms every day. If you want to share your story with us, please reach out on the email address science of reading [at] newpaltz.edu, which is in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.