A Random Pamphlet Changed My Instruction feat. Anjanette McNeely

Anjanette McNeely, a kindergarten teacher and former literacy coach in Kaysville, Utah, joins host Rose Else-Mitchell to discuss her professional journey from a whole-language teacher preparation program to becoming an advocate for evidence-based literacy instruction.

Anjanette shares how an unexpected pamphlet summarizing the National Reading Panel Report sparked a decades-long pursuit of learning more about effective reading instruction. She also reflects on the role her husband—a former striving reader himself—played in encouraging her to keep searching for better ways to support children in becoming readers.

Rose and Anjanette discuss the importance of connecting meaning to foundational skills, the role of vocabulary and oral language in kindergarten classrooms, and how Anjanette gradually reimagined her literacy block to weave reading, writing, and language instruction throughout the day. They also explore coaching, teacher learning, and why following student data (and not any single expert) has guided Anjanette's instructional decisions over time.

References and Resources:

• Word Chaining: An Efficient and Effective Alternative to Oral Phonemic Awareness by Anjanette McNeely
• How to Build a Reading Block: Two Teachers Share Their Approaches by Sarah Schwartz for EdWeek, feat. Anjanette McNeely
• How Do We Learn? by Héctor Ruiz Martín
• The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion series by Beth Brower
• Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz

Credits:

• Guest: Anjanette McNeely, Kindergarten Teacher, Former Literacy Coach, and Goyen Literacy Fellow based in Kaysville, UT
• 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, kindergarten, early literacy, structured literacy, dyslexia, vocabulary instruction, oral language, phonics, writing instruction, literacy coaching, reading rope, kindergarten reading instruction, foundational skills, teacher learning, professional development

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Transcript

Anjanette McNeely 0:04

Having a reading block didn't work. I needed to push literacy into every part of my day.

Rose Else-Mitchell 0:12

Welcome to Reading Realities, a podcast about what it really takes to change how we teach reading. Each episode, I talk with an educator about the evidence-based instructional and mindset shifts that they're making. Because the truth is, changing your reading instruction is not simple. It can be challenging, it can be messy, and we think no one should have to figure it out alone. I'm your host, Rose Else-Mitchell, Executive Director of the Science of Reading Center at SUNY New Paltz. Today I'm joined by Anjanette McNeely, a kindergarten teacher in Kaysville, Utah. Anjanette brings more than three decades of classroom experience and a remarkable perspective on how reading instruction has evolved over the course of her career. We talk about the power of curiosity in teaching and how a personal connection sparked for her a deeper understanding of dyslexia and reading development. We also talk about what it looks like to continually refine your instruction based on research. Throughout our conversation, Anjanette offers a thoughtful and practical perspective on professional learning, on coaching, and supporting the next generation of teachers. Let's dive in. Well, thank you so much, Anjanette, for joining us.

Anjanette McNeely 1:25

Thanks. It's a pleasure to be here.

Rose Else-Mitchell 1:26

S o maybe you could just share a little bit about your journey into teaching reading.

Anjanette McNeely 1:30

So I am kind of old at this, I think. There's a lot of people in the science of reading who are a lot younger than me, but I graduated from college in 1994 from a complete whole language background. It didn't take me long as a kindergarten teacher to realize that kids needed to know their letters and sounds. Like nothing was gonna happen without that. But at the beginning of my career, we didn't even have a report card in kindergarten. So kindergarten teachers were just kind of choosing what to teach the kids. So we would teach the letters and sounds, and then, you know, first grade would pick up from there and teach kids how to read. So then I took the big break from being in the classroom. And when I came back in 2009, of course, the National Panel Reading Report had come out by that point. And as a teacher, I found a pamphlet in my box one day. And I started reading it and I was like, these are the things I should be doing in my classroom. And so we started looking at the different components of reading that had been outlined in the National Panel Reading Report.

Rose Else-Mitchell 2:30

So it was a pamphlet in your mailbox in school that was this accidental change?

Anjanette McNeely 2:36

Yeah, these things were working. So, you know, I just wanted to kind of chase after that.

Rose Else-Mitchell 2:41

So where did you, it was a pamphlet. It wasn't, it certainly wasn't a lesson plan or a teaching plan. So where did you go to get the information that you knew you didn't have?

Anjanette McNeely 2:53

Some of it was we also had got trained on PLCs. And at that point in time, educational blogs were starting to become a thing. And so we were being able to find some information online on those things. And then a few years later, I was working with a student who everything that I knew wasn't working. You know, I tried so many things, but we just couldn't get him to remember his letter names. And so we found this free seminar that was put on by this our state board of education on dyslexia. And at that point in time, we weren't even allowed to say dyslexia in my district. So as I learned about dyslexia and what it really was and what it wasn't, then I just started diving in to find anything else that I could about it. And I kept coming home and telling my husband, who had been a struggling reader, you know, oh, there's this about dyslexia, oh, there's this about dyslexia. And he's going, that was me, that was me, that was me. And so we're, you know, not diagnosing, but believing that he had a lot of these same struggles. So he is saying to me and still says to me, You have got to go help those kids. I know what it was like to be the kid in the class who didn't understand that and not know how to do that. And I, you've just got to go help them if you can.

Rose Else-Mitchell 4:06

Wow, that is a moving connection to your work. When you were working with this child and and then with your class, what was the first change that you made?

Anjanette McNeely 4:18

I think we just started learning more about the alphabetical principle. Then I started learning about like the four-part processing model and the idea that meaning needs to be attached.

Rose Else-Mitchell 4:29

Yes.

Anjanette McNeely 4:29

And that's that was the piece that really helped that that particular student. Once we attached meaning, we had him draw his own flashcards. And I I remember P because it was microwave popcorn. So I always remember that picture of him and his microwave and the popcorn inside. And once we allowed him to attach the meaning, then he was able to retain those.

Rose Else-Mitchell 4:51

Right. And I love that idea as well that it was a personal context for the meaning, you know, whether it's vocabulary or making the semantic connection as part of processing, you know, sounds and letters, being able to have something that's relevant to you. What about comprehension? I mean, when you have students who have some of these dyslexia-like challenges, whether diagnosed or not, how do you support, particularly at kindergarten, meaning making at the text level, not just connecting semantics to letters and sounds and words?

Anjanette McNeely 5:22

I have really enjoyed now that we have a good content knowledge building curriculum, that has helped a lot because it is gonna build on itself and it's going to help bring back information and help with that retrieval practice piece. But I think vocabulary building is a really key piece to building comprehension for the little ones. I mean, we do work on syntax too, that vocabulary has been a key piece in being able to understand what they're reading.

Rose Else-Mitchell 5:53

Vocabulary is so tricky and building that explicit vocabulary at a young age. I have a 15-year-old and I'm always so excited when she's reading and she'll just say, What does this word mean? And she had reading struggles, but as opposed to kind of skipping over it because you don't know how to attack it or you don't know how to say it, let alone think about what does it mean.

Anjanette McNeely 6:13

Yeah, it's so exciting when the kids start to use those words. And so the parents email you and say, My child's saying they're revising their thinking at home, or my, you know, my my child just came home and said, you know, I want to teach you something. Can you add that to your schema? Because little kids love to use those big words. They're fascinated by them. And so is a fun thing in our classroom to introduce and use those big words.

Rose Else-Mitchell 6:40

My gosh, that must be so great when when a five-year-old says, I'd like to update my schema. That's brilliant. So let's let's rewind back. You know, you said in college you, you know, you didn't you didn't learn some of what you learned later from the pamphlet and the national reading panel. So what were you taught to do early in your career?

Anjanette McNeely 6:59

We were big into the letter a week, which, you know, you spend a lot of time and do a lot of crafts and things like that on the letter a week. And the kids would just kind of read and they would just magically learn to read. One of my projects in college, I had to pick a book, read it with a student, and then do an activity that went along with that book. And I had a cousin who lives near my college town. I picked her up first grade. We read a story about baking chocolate chip cookies, then we baked chocolate chip cookies. And I remember even while doing the experience, thinking, how does this help her pick the words off the page? I get that she has understanding of chocolate chip cookies, but how does she have an understanding of these words? You know, that's kind of what I went into my first year with. Our program did have a little bit of phonics in it. And then I was a big believer in teaching writing. So as the students would orally say their sentence, then we'd have to segment in order to write it. And so some blending and segmenting was working its way into my instruction, but not to the level that I understand it now.

Rose Else-Mitchell 8:04

Right. So you were sort of organically building encoding through writing. And obviously, writing is such a fabulous way to now do diagnosis and understand you know whether students have phonological or orthographic issues. So you were instinctively searching, sounds like, for both assessment and instructional change. What kinds of assessments were you using when you first started?

Anjanette McNeely 8:28

There was really no assessments. So Beth, I think why I loved writing so much is because it did give me a little assessment. I mean, we created our own report cards. So we created a little assessment on do they know their letters and sounds? And maybe a few like blendable words, um, like cat and some of those others, but it was very basic. It was very um, you know, kindergarten is a place just to kind of come in and get settled, not to really start your reading journey.

Rose Else-Mitchell 8:56

Yeah, yeah. And that's important, but it is also it's a lost year if you're not also starting your reading journey, right? So then you had this big break. What what were some of the changes that you that you noticed when you came back?

Anjanette McNeely 9:11

Well, no child left behind had happened in the middle of that. And so the district was supporting the Title I schools in a different way. And there was more of a push to meet some academic goals, and there was more data to use to understand who was at risk and then to if you were trying something to see if it was really working. So those were two of the biggest Right.

Rose Else-Mitchell 9:35

But it sounds like it was a little bit of a experimentation. And how was the culture in the district around changing your instruction? Were other teachers changing their instruction?

Anjanette McNeely 9:47

I think it was maybe state mandated, so everyone was, but I I just wasn't aware of a coordinated effort. Like now in the district, there's a very coordinated, cohesive effort for those types of things.

Rose Else-Mitchell 9:59

Right. And as you said earlier, there's so many more curricula and materials and you know, the blog blogger sphere, and you have a wonderful blog piece out. We'll make sure that's in the show notes, uh, as well as you know, work that you've done around reimagining your your literacy block too. You want to share a little bit of about how you do that?

Anjanette McNeely 10:20

I just from my literacy block over the years, like picking up pieces of information as I've gone on, and especially during 2020, I mean it was the pandemic, but the amount of free information about literacy and the free webinars that anyone could get on and start understanding more was really, really awesome for teachers.

Rose Else-Mitchell 10:40

Yeah.

Anjanette McNeely 10:41

And so I started like picking up pieces and trying to figure out, you know, like how do I make this part of my day better? How do I make this part of my day better? And was able to finally a few years ago get a really strong phonics curriculum and then also a strong content knowledge curriculum. And so those took off some of the pressure for those things. And then our district also went to full-day kindergarten. And so that gave us more time so we could expand into some of the other things. I've been reading about oral language, especially, has been had a resurgence right now, the importance of oral language and what we need to do for these students. And, you know, where am I gonna fit that in into my day? And then vocabulary instruction. I need more and better vocabulary instruction and writing instruction, the same thing. I've had the opportunity to take more trainings and get better at teaching my students to be writers. So for me, there's a talk about how many minutes you're gonna have in your reading block. Having a reading block didn't work. I needed to push literacy into every part of my day. So we needed to think about when we have our morning team circle, this needs to be an oral language opportunity. So I need to maximize it. During writing, oral language is also still important. During phonics, we can stop and quickly use a moment to talk about vocabulary if needed, especially like multiple meaning words. The reading rope isn't each strand, the reading rope is when it's woven together. So I kind of have a handle on some of these strands now. How am I weaving them together?

Rose Else-Mitchell 12:10

That is so wise. You know, one of the things I love about the rope is it's supposed to show students increasing fluency and strategic comprehension. But in a way, what you're saying is it also represents teachers' ongoing mastery of how to teach each of those strands. And I think that is a lot how learning happens. We break things down into the pieces and then we bring them back together to integrate. But it takes a minute, doesn't it? I mean, to master the different pieces of the rope. Yeah, it does take a minute.

Anjanette McNeely 12:42

I work with a teacher who's this is her third year of teaching, but I've worked with her for three years. And she said that like her journey has been so much smoother just because she has somebody who can coach her through it. So I'm hoping that more teachers have that opportunity instead of the discover everything piece by piece, like my journey was.

Rose Else-Mitchell 13:03

Yeah, that's very wise. And that's why we're so happy to have you on the podcast today, too. The more teachers can share with each other when their practices are rooted in the evidence, and they've also had some time to integrate that into their own practice and not forget everything they learned before. I love that you've returned to writing. Tell me about your most recent writing lesson and what they did and what you learned.

Anjanette McNeely 13:26

One of our most recent ones was on our field trip writing about an experience that you had. And our goal on it was to add adjectives into our writing. So it was a really fun write because it was a personal experience. We went to a farm and the farm had this white slide that was up on big stacks of hay. I went down the slide, but now it becomes, I went down the gigantic white slide. And it's so fun to watch them progress like that and become better writers and really understand with the strong structure, they can understand how to put adjectives in and still make it make sense.

Rose Else-Mitchell 14:01

And of course, you're building oral language and vocabulary and nuance and connotation around vocabulary there too, right? Yeah. Yep.

Anjanette McNeely 14:09

And the phonics and phonemic awareness are coming in with even their word recognition where they're required to spell all the words that we have learned as part of our high frequency words correctly.

Rose Else-Mitchell 14:20

Yes. I really love the idea that you're peer coaching in a way, another another teacher. I was in a school a couple of days ago, and one of the roles of the coach, the literacy coach in the school is to go into a classroom where a teacher is teaching, and that teacher can then go and visit with another teacher and see that teacher in action. But it it really emphasizes, I think, the opportunity that teachers need to see each other teach, you know, um, and to see a peer do something that you might be doing in a curriculum, but to see them do it and to do it perhaps differently or with nuance. And it's not a matter of better or worse or evaluative, but just that support of doing something together or similarly. Yeah.

Anjanette McNeely 15:04

One of the benefits of being in the title school for so many years is that we had phenomenal training. And part of that was that we were allowed, encouraged to go watch other teachers and watch them for specific things. And that was one of the things that pushed me forward as a teacher more than anything else. I've also spent a couple of years as a literacy coach. So I know what it's like on the other side to be the one trying to coach as well. And it could just make a big difference.

Rose Else-Mitchell 15:32

Yeah. It's great to have those coaching skills. But you decided to go back to the classroom, not to keep coaching.

Anjanette McNeely 15:37

I just loved being the one doing the lesson. That was where my happy spot was. And I also have a small concern about many really strong teachers leaving the classroom for other opportunities. And who helps coach up the younger teachers? Who helps make their journey more smooth, more efficient, more effective if everybody is heading out of the classroom?

Rose Else-Mitchell 16:01

Yeah. What keeps you motivated to keep learning so much? You're had this really interesting career with a big gap and your own kiddos in the in the middle. You seem unstoppable.

Anjanette McNeely 16:13

Oh no. I get tired like everybody else.

Rose Else-Mitchell 16:16

I'm sure

Anjanette McNeely 16:17

I I have a curiosity to try to help the next student in front of me. And like any teacher who's done this for a long time knows, you think you might have got it, but there's not one perfect way. There's a new student every year who might have a different challenge, who you might need more repetitions for, or you might need to go searching for an intervention you haven't used before. For part of my journey, I wanted to find the one expert who would tell me, you know, this is the way to do it. And then I would read a book from one expert and a book from a different expert, and it would have differing opinions on how to do it. I mean, there's differing opinions even on should we introduce the lowercase and capital letters together or should we do it separately. And so I started realizing that I was gonna have to take what I learned from those things and then work on it in my classroom and just follow the data. And when the data was showing growth, those were the things I was going to be using. I really wish there was a little bit more willingness of researchers to actually do the research in classrooms with teachers.

Rose Else-Mitchell 17:22

Yeah.

Anjanette McNeely 17:22

I'm sure that's hard and messy, but I think it would be really interesting for teachers.

Rose Else-Mitchell 17:28

Yeah, all ways to equip teachers like yourself to do action research where you could be doing that in real time. Yeah, it's interesting. I remember working with Dr. Anne Cunningham on a program of the Stanovich and Cunningham, What Reading Does to the Mind, one of the first articles I ever read about reading research. But I remember asking her around a pre-K scope and sequence, what's the best evidence for teaching which letters first when you teach the alphabet to little kiddos? And she's like, there's not, you know, it it's not, and I and I was so frustrated, just like the uppercase, lowercase. It's the you you really wish there were, there were things that we knew more about. So you're right, it does have to be something where if the curriculum hasn't made a decision, what do you do? And if the curriculum has made a decision, is it working for the kids in front of you? So I love that idea that what keeps you motivated is the next child. Is there a student that you feel like you are able to reach differently?

Anjanette McNeely 18:26

I might go back a couple years to a student who this particular student came into the school very young, like he was late August birthday. So he was four when he started. I don't know that he'd ever held a pencil or a pair of scissors in his hand. Um, there was some rough family situations. So he lived with a single parent and a grandparent and a great-grandparent and was very, very low coming in with reading and math skills. But it was half day. Um, we had an extended day program. So we got to stay for an extra 45 minutes of specialized reading instruction, and then just started trying to teach the whole class and him individually with what I like to call my best bets. Anything that I've learned so far that I think is the most effective and efficient, and just kept working with him. He sucked knowledge in like a sponge and started becoming so successful, remembering the things we were teaching him. And by mid-year, he was at benchmark, and by the end of the year, he was above benchmark in reading. And we had an end-of-level assessment that was a one-on-one. So the parents or grandparents would come in and bring him to this one-on-one assessment. And mid-year, there had been some morph problems, and mom had unfortunately been incarcerated again. So it had been a really rough emotional year for this little guy. But the consistency of school and his knowledge that he was learning, I mean, he could feel it, he could see it, just helped him kind of be able to get through the difficulties. And when his grandpa came to pick him up and we talked about how well he was doing, his it was a great grandpa, actually. Great grandpa just cried because he was so grateful that this little guy was being given a chance to, you know, make the most of his life, which the education could do for him, despite some of the hard circumstances that were dealt to him that were not any fault of his own.

Rose Else-Mitchell 20:19

Yeah. It's those things that keep us doing what we're doing, right? Yeah.

Anjanette McNeely 20:24

And as a reading coach, a couple years later had access to school data. And so I was tracking him. And by second grade, he was still up there, you know, with good reading skills. Sometimes you get him really strong in kindergarten, but they'll fall back. And so it was really exciting to see that he was continuing on with that.

Rose Else-Mitchell 20:41

Yeah. And having that strong start and then getting into third grade where there's so much more text. Wow. Well, I hope he's continuing his journey that you helped boost and start. And, you know, you're changing a child's life trajectory and his life as an adult. Thank you for sharing. What advice would you give to a teacher who's navigating the shift or is just getting started or is, you know, scared to try some of these new things they feel too theoretical or they've just been given a new curriculum, which while it might be high quality, is new and difficult and hard and got a lot in it?

Anjanette McNeely 21:15

I think it is to reach out and learn from the experts, but then also pay attention to what's happening in your classroom. And for me, the best way to do that is looking at what's happening with the data. The data can seem so intimidating, but it really is to help that child. It's not a judgment about what you are doing or what you're not doing. I mean, my data has changed drastically over the years as my understanding of teaching reading has changed. And then if something isn't going the way you think in your data, reach out to support from coaches or other teachers and see, you know, video yourself. That was one thing we did early on in my practice, is we were required to video ourselves and watch it so that you can understand maybe what moves are happening or sh are not happening that you should change. I would also say like take it a piece at a time because it can be overwhelming.

Rose Else-Mitchell 22:11

Yeah. And and taking the strings of the reading rope and then separating them and then putting them together to be increasingly strategic, as it says as a teacher, as well as helping kiddos do that. That's great. Last minute question is what's a book that you'd recommend to um our listeners?

Anjanette McNeely 22:30

I am reading this summer How Do We Learn by Hector Ruiz Martin. And it has been fascinating with really clear but really research-based on the way that we learn. And so that helps in all areas of our teaching. That's great. Any fiction? I am loving these new, they're called the unselected journals of Emma M. Lion. And it's a series. It's a little bit uh Jane Austen-ish. It's a new series that I'm loving.

Rose Else-Mitchell 22:59

My daughter's reading Eligible, which is the rewriting of Pride and Prejudice. So if you're in there, if you're in the Jane Austen mode, I think that's that's a next stop. Well, I want to thank you, Anjanette, for spending time with us today. And we look forward to talking to you again, I hope.

Anjanette McNeely 23:15

Thank you so much.

Rose Else-Mitchell 23:20

Thank you for joining us today for this episode of Reading Realities. Thank you, Anjanette, for such an honest and inspiring conversation. Anjanette's commitment to continuous learning stays with me. Her story reminds me that becoming an effective teacher isn't just about finding a single expert to follow or a perfect curriculum. It's about staying curious, paying attention to the work students are doing, and using both research and your classroom practice to guide your decisions. Although perhaps most moving was her reflection that what keeps her learning is the next child. Every year brings new students, new challenges, and new opportunities to make a difference. That mindset of curiosity, of persistence, and hope is at the heart of our work as educators. If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next and share it with a colleague or an educator in your life. As we continue building this community, it would mean a lot if you could take a moment to rate and review the show. It helps us reach more educators who are learning, reflecting, and refining their practice. If you'd like to learn more about our work or share your story on a future episode of Reading Realities, you can reach us at science of reading at newpaltz.edu. You'll also find that information in the show notes. We'll be back soon with more conversations from educators navigating the realities of reading instruction. Thanks for listening.