Melissa & Lori Love Literacy ™

[Listen Again] Language for Life with Lyn Stone

• Episode 155

Share episode

Episode 155 (from July 21, 2023)

Curious about how words shape learning? Join us as we chat with linguist and author Lyn Stone about vocabulary, etymology, and their impact on literacy.

Lyn shares practical strategies for teaching morphology and etymology, the importance of teacher knowledge, and great resources to build students' word awareness. We also dig into grammar and syntax—how they reflect thinking and why they matter for literacy. Plus, Lyn gives us a sneak peek at the new edition of Language for Life. Don't miss this insightful conversation!

Resources


We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.

Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.

Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.

Lori:

Words are powerful. Students need to develop a deep understanding of language and vocabulary, to comprehend what they read and to write well. But as a teacher, where do you start? What strategies actually work?

Melissa:

We are thrilled to have linguist and author Lyn Stone on the podcast today. She'll share insights on the joy of teaching words, the science behind vocabulary instruction and the resources teachers need to bring etymology and morphology to life.

Lori:

If you've been searching for ways to make vocabulary instruction more engaging or you're curious about how etymology and morphology can transform student learning, this episode is for you. Hi teacher friends, I'm Lori and I'm Melissa. We are two educators who want the best for all kids, and we know you do too.

Melissa:

We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.

Lori:

We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing. Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today how to teach reading and writing, lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today. Hi everyone, welcome to Melissa and Lori Love Literacy. I saw Lyn Stone present at both the Reading League Conference and at Plain Talk Conference this past year, and she makes learning words so easy and so much fun, might I add.

Melissa:

Yeah, so we're so excited to have Lyn Stone here today, and you may know her as the author of several books Reading for Life, spelling for Life, language for Life. Are there any other ones that I missed, Lyn?

Lyn Stone:

There's one coming out soon called Writing for Life, and when I say soon, I've been saying that for about three years, so who knows?

Melissa:

Well, we're excited for it, we're ready for what it is soon, and welcome to the podcast today.

Lyn Stone:

Thank you, it's a great pleasure to be here. I'm really excited. Actually. I'm a big fan of your podcast, so huge honor, thank you.

Lori:

Yeah, thank you. Well, we're a big fan of yours and we were a little nervous. We were like nervous to ask you to be on the podcast because you know you're so fancy.

Lyn Stone:

Okay, I'm definitely putting that on my CV Linstone fancy.

Melissa:

Yeah, god, I can't wait. So well done.

Lyn Stone:

That's great. No, it's a huge honor to be here and lovely to talk to you as well.

Lori:

Yeah Well, thank you. I thought actually we could start with the way that you started the conference at the Reading League, and I'll refresh your memory you simply shared what are words. You just shared with everyone what are words, and I thought that was brilliant. So I was hoping you could just kind of ground us in what are words and what we should think about.

Lyn Stone:

Yeah Well, I love that question actually, and the reason I sort of do talks like this and ask questions like what are words, is because there are quite a few misconceptions out there and my job is to try to clear up those misconceptions from the viewpoint of someone who's trained in the structure of language. So you know, as a linguist, what you think about is words and you think about them at the subword level, so all the parts that make up words, and you think of them in the sort of the cluster level as well, where you have phrases and sentences and so on. So words are my stock and trade and therefore I think it's a good idea to talk about that. And I think also, from little kids all the way up to adults, everybody's interested in words. You're kind of hardwired to learn about that stuff because what they are is the foundation of communication and, as we know, communication is survival in a society. So everybody wants to know in a society. So everybody wants to know. So I like to start there and I like to talk about that.

Lyn Stone:

And in terms of what words are, well, one principle is a really good starting point and this also clears up a little bit of gosh morphology. That's really hard, right. So a lot of people find morphology a bit intimidating. Well, if you start from this principle, and that is that every single word that you use is a base, it's a basis like a Lego base that you can put other parts onto. There are some words that you can't, and they're called unalterable bases. So you've got words like of.

Lyn Stone:

You know those little function words. You can't put a prefix or suffix on, of, you can't make it plural, you can't put it into the past tense, you can't do all of that stuff, so they're unalterable. But they're a tiny, tiny set. Everything else is an alterable base and actually some of the bases are. They have to be altered to be English words, you know, like struct, right, that doesn't hang around by itself. It's not a base that you see unattached to other word parts. So you've got to put prefixes or suffixes, like structure or construct and so on. So that's what words, every single word. If you start with that, every single word is or contains a base and that's the part that carries the majority of the meaning. If you start there, it helps to build mental models of the entire system.

Melissa:

Well, I'm wondering, and I know our audience is, and I'm sure this has a million answers, but we'll start here and see where we go. Which is what should teachers be thinking about as they're teaching words?

Lyn Stone:

or students are learning words, yeah, huge huge thing and huge question and, as you said, lots and lots of answers, and I can only really answer it from my viewpoint. I can only really answer it from my perspective, whereas you know there may be other perspectives as well but the way that I look at it and what's been successful for me because I've had lots and lots of students over time and now my students are teachers as well, because I don't even see students one-on-one anymore. I do see groups of students, but teachers are my students. And so what should we be thinking about? Or what should teachers want children to be thinking about? I think I love that question. Do you mind if I go from that perspective? Yeah, so what do we want children to think about? Well, we want them to have the concept, first of all, of what words are and how they can be built, what their structure is and what their smaller parts are.

Lyn Stone:

And I think phonics right, this word that gets bandied around a lot is basically a way of helping children think about the sub-word parts, the parts of words that are not the words themselves but the components of words. And if that's taught to them in a systematic way rather than a kind of random way, oh, we'll take your name and then we're going to look at the parts of that, but a systematic way, like here's some really common ones that you can put together to make new words without me. Then that helps children to become wordsmiths. So, teachers, thinking about, what do I want children to know? I want them to know those parts, I want them to be able to put those parts together, I want them to be able to take words apart as well.

Lyn Stone:

That's a really good, brilliant starting point and from that you can then build. Well, guess what? There are other units, there are other parts of words that are bigger than just sounds and letters, that carry meaning as well, and that's where we just easily, smoothly, can transition into morphology, and when you do that, you're never disappointed. It's always a fun, really exciting, wonderful thing to do and you're constantly learning it. I'm still learning, I'm still learning about word parts, and it's really nice. I love it.

Lori:

Yeah, okay, so we'll transition into morphology. I think that's a good place to go. But I will say the thing that struck me as I was preparing for this. I was reading language for life and the thing that struck me is just the playfulness of the tone of the book and how fun it is to play with words. And I just want to say that before we jump into morphology because you brought it up and I think it's really important that to say that kids and and I think as a teacher you know I always loved playing with words. I thought that was so much fun. So I'm wondering if we could kind of start with kind of grounding ourselves in like what, what does it mean to what does morphology mean? What does? I think we should maybe go into etymology. I think that might be a good thing to reference as well. You're the expert, so I'll let you go ahead and then maybe what the research says about it all.

Lyn Stone:

Okay, yeah, again, a tiny little question there. No, look, I like the way you've put all of that, because they're inextricable, aren't they? They're units of language that work together. That, you know, we can sort of consciously separate, but when we're communicating with one another, they're all mixed together at the unconscious level, which is awe-inspiring in itself. And I'm actually reminded of an exercise that I do when I'm training teachers to show the difference between conscious and unconscious right, which is really relevant for what we're talking about today.

Lyn Stone:

We talk about syllable emphasis in one of the things that I do. We talk about in every word that's got more than one syllable. There's going to be a strong one that you hear louder, or the vowel is more clear, or so on. And I say to them you know this, you actually, and most children, by the time they're six, totally know this from language, from just being immersed in language. It's something that they know, and you know where the syllable emphasis is, because when you talk, a typically developing four or five, six-year-old will have their syllable emphasis absolutely perfect, right. And any native speaker knows where to put the strong syllables in. But you do all that at the unconscious level. When I start to ask teachers to be conscious of it. When I say, hey, take this word dinosaur, right, where's the strong syllable there? Because we don't go dinosaur like that, right, we go dinosaur. And so the strong bit is that first syllable. They've really struggled with that and I go. You know it unconsciously, but when you're conscious of it, when you actually have to start articulating what that is, it's really difficult.

Lyn Stone:

And so it is with morphology, with morphemes. We do understand the basic meanings of most of the morphemes when we have our lexicon built, when we've built our vocabulary, but actually talking about that and deconstructing it is really really hard, and so morphology and etymology, where the words come from, are intertwined to help to bring that into and up to the conscious level. So I think, in my view, etymology will inform why the morphemes are like they are. Even though we know the meaning of the morphemes and we can pronounce the morphemes and maybe even spell them, etymology helps us bring that to the conscious level, and that's why it's important to talk about both of those things. So I've answered two of the things that you were talking about there. I'm not sure if I answered all of them, though, so you can reframe the question if you wish.

Lori:

Yeah Well, I think I'd love to hear some of the research and what it says about that, but I also think it might be helpful. I love examples. Do you have any examples that you could give to share how etymology informs the morphology?

Lyn Stone:

Yeah, here's what I learned really recently Because, like I say, it's a lifelong journey and you're always discovering new stuff, right? And here's a new thing that I wasn't conscious of when I again, when I work with people, I say give me the words that you find the hardest to spell or the hardest to teach or remember, because I'm really interested in those. Why is it that we don't remember those words? And inevitably this word onomatopoeia comes up. Right, because you know it's fairly complicated there's lots of schwa vowels in there and is it?

Lyn Stone:

onomatto or is it onomatto because I say onomatto and blah, blah, blah, right, and and that pia bit right. P o e is this. It's a base and I, I, somebody told me this about a month ago it's a base that is also in the base poem, right. When we make poems it's to do with words and sounds. Oh, do you know? I mean p-o-e, p-r, right poem, even though the pronunciation is completely different. The etymology helps to tell us the base does both. Both those bases are the same. They help to tell us how to spell that flipping word, right. And I was just to say that actually will help me.

Lyn Stone:

That's the brilliant thing. So there's a morpheme there, but it's the etymology of those morphemes that drives that sequence of letters, that makes that word, that word and therefore easier to spell and easier to conceptualize. You're just making more paths in your brain about what onomatopoeia really is and how that relates to poetry. Oh, that's so fun.

Melissa:

I love learning those. Did you all see the thing about Mother recently that came out on some of the Facebook pages? There was like this whole argument about someone did a really cute little thing for Mother's Day A schwa. It had the schwa for the o and then people were like that's, it's not a schwa for the o. And I, you know, I didn't, I don't know those things too well. So I was like reading all the comments, I was really into it and then I got really deep and someone had said that what's it called lyn Lyn, when it was like because it used to be a U?

Melissa:

but then in old script scribal O and then people like it's not actually a scribal O because of the etymology and the word that it came from from, like I'm going to get it wrong, but somewhere, like in a Germanic language way long ago, it was actually the root was still O and it was just this whole argument. Was actually the root was still O and it was just this whole argument. I just thought it was like fascinating to see like where did this come from?

Melissa:

Just a simple word. Simple word like mother. There can be a lot of myths out there, a lot of arguments, absolutely Arguments and myths, and also sometimes we lose sight of the woods.

Lyn Stone:

You know for the trees, you know what I mean.

Lyn Stone:

I don't know a lot of kids that get past elementary school, not being able to spell mother and not knowing what it means. So can you move on? Because we've got bigger fish to fry right Than this word that everyone can spell and understand right. It doesn't drive me crazy. I mean, I love the fact, right, that people like linguistics, they like the structure of language, and that makes me really happy when they get upset. It's not good. But there is a thing that does drive me crazy on the social media and I and thank you for giving me this platform to say it out loud- and are you ready?

Lyn Stone:

Are you on the edge of your seat? It's this right.

Lyn Stone:

It's when people go how do you say the sounds in this word? And you're talking about, you know, maybe a hundred thousand people from all sorts of different backgrounds and different countries and different towns, even within their own countries. And somebody goes how do you say it? Or, even worse, the worst question is how do I map this word as if? How do I squish these phonemes into these graphemes? Or what are the correct? What's the right way to say this word? There is no right way, come on.

Lyn Stone:

And then all these arguments ensue but oh, but, if you say it properly, it's like this, or I say it like this. Therefore, everyone in the world needs to say it like this. And that drives me crazy, because what the original poster is trying to do is say, basically, how do I teach that so that children remember it? And that's got nothing to do with how people think the word should be said. It's got everything to do with the sequence of letters, and the sounds are secondary, the secondary to it. So that drives me crazy, but I do try and talk about that a bit.

Melissa:

Wow, and I love that you brought up that. I mean, you know we're talking to you and obviously we would say a lot of words differently in two different countries. But, like you said, even within a state, from city to city, you might say things differently, and I love that you say it and we need to respect all the ways that people say words yeah.

Lyn Stone:

What are the signs in this word is not the right question. The right question is what is the letter sequence? Why is it like that and how do I teach it so that people remember that?

Lori:

That's really helpful. Yeah, for sure that's really helpful. I love that. That's going to be my new comment, Lyn.

Lyn Stone:

Okay, good, If it helps one person, it's been worth going mad for.

Lori:

You're right, Lyn Stone says oh no, don't quote me. No shame if any listeners have posted no, not at all, I mean, I never do it to shame anyone.

Lyn Stone:

I just I try to get people to ask better questions. You know better questions because that leads to better answers and better outcomes and then that leads to better lives and so on. So it's like, you know, it's like that old thing for want of a nail, a shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, a horse was lost. You know that sort of thing for want of a better question, an answer was lost, and that can build to a whole. You know, academic career is lost, right?

Melissa:

I'm wondering about. I mean, laura, you brought up this idea of like how words can be so fun and the tone of Lyn's book is really fun. And I'm just wondering, Lyn if you have any suggestions for teachers on how to keep or how to build that like curiosity and fun kind of way of looking at words, versus making it feel like memorizing a bunch of rules and old ways, that this is how words were made and it could feel, I think, really boring for students depending on how it's presented. You're quite right, you're quite right, melissa.

Lyn Stone:

And you know, something else that's really boring for students is giving them a list of whole words and then going color that in or draw a coffin around it. You know those sort of things. That sort of thing. That's really boring too. So there's that.

Lyn Stone:

But look, I think it starts with or I've seen this happen in real life with real teachers it starts with teachers having an expanded knowledge of this. We can't have the blind leading the blind, and so that's where I come in, where I try to raise teacher capacity on this. And, as I said, you know, I'm pretty far on in my career and I've been studying words for a long time and I'm still learning this stuff. There is absolutely no shame in any of that. That's an attitude that really helps. So that's the first thing You've got to want to be this lifelong learner of that stuff, and there's no shame involved.

Lyn Stone:

Or, you know, sometimes, when we let go of things that didn't work that well before, it's really crucial to not have an identity crisis while we're doing that. And after all, when you go into teaching, that does become your identity, especially with modern teacher training methods. There will be a lot during that degree that you do that goes. What is your philosophy? How is this bound with your identity? There's a lot of exercises you have to do on that, right, so therefore it can lead to a bit of a crisis, letting go of all that other stuff and then having to think really hard and deeply about words. But when you do that's what starts to make it fun. It's not really. You know, I can't give you a tip and go, oh, make it fun by doing this. Can't give you a tip and go, oh, make it fun by doing this. You make it fun by knowing and having that openness to finding out and not being worried that you're going to encounter something that you don't know, because, guess what?

Lyn Stone:

We have this thing called the internet, right, and if you don't, know, there are really good places that you can go to find it, and I can be standing there in front of hundreds of people and somebody will ask me a question about a word and I'll go. I don't know, I don't carry all of it in my head, but I've got Etim Online, the app here on my phone, so I'm just going to look it up for you. I don't mind doing that. That's what makes it fun when you can actually model that behavior, that well, if I don't know, I know where to find that out. Let's do that together. You never, ever, have to be this kind of guru. You know that has it all in your head and you can be wrong as well. I've had lots of hypotheses about words that have turned out to be absolutely, completely false. I'm all right, I'm fine to let that go as well.

Lyn Stone:

It's okay. So I think that's the fun part. I'm sorry if it's vague, but it comes from teacher capacity and the broadening of teacher knowledge. First and foremost, you need to know more than your students and you need to make sure that your students understand that. If there is a limit to your knowledge, but that's okay too and there's a way to you know, move the limits on that knowledge.

Lori:

Yeah, I'm wondering if, like the words that we're choosing right. So I'm thinking about a teacher listening and I'm thinking, okay, the teacher's reading a novel or reading a book with their students the words that we choose, it almost feels less important to. I mean, it's important in its own right, but it's less important to obsess over that part than like, okay, now we're going to play with these words and kind of like, allow your students to get in there and get messy with the words, but you have to be familiar and you know and have some sort of preset knowledge about some basic morphology, quote stuff. Does that sound right? Like you know, I just think sometimes, I know when I was a teacher I would stress so much about like, are these the right words, Are these the right academic words to be teaching? And you know, I think just trying words feels really important here, just trying to play with words and language, and I think students are brilliant in that way. They are.

Lyn Stone:

They find it very interesting because, again, it's a survival mechanism. Playing with words is the way that an infant will acquire their native language. So it's something that you're hardwired to do, first of all, so you build on that instinct and therefore you can make it really, really joyful. But I like, laurie, what you were saying about obsessing over is this the right word? Time and time again I'll be asked well, do you have a list of those words? Like, can I have a list? This thing that you've, this resource you have, is there a list in there? This resource you have, is there a list in there? And all my career I've resisted making lists because the best word list is a book. That's the best word list that you can get. Right, it's a book that either builds knowledge or craft craft, what's the word I want to say? Craftfully, is that even a word, or did I just make that up? See, it doesn't matter, right, you made it up.

Lori:

I think, but it doesn't matter, I'm going to substitute it.

Lyn Stone:

Artfully.

Melissa:

We know what you mean, Artfully deftly right.

Lyn Stone:

So the way that you teach the words within that book, you know, and the joy that you have with that and the way that you build knowledge and build stories that children listen to. That's the important thing. If you take it, that's the art bit. Right, let's take it to the science bit. Okay, I'm going to give you some numbers. If you have a fully formed lexicon and that's, you know, a vocabulary that is a typically developing adult vocabulary or developed adult vocabulary, you're in between about 30,000 to 70,000 word and word parts. You kind of know instantly and automatically, without having to look them up. You know what those words are.

Lyn Stone:

If you have a sight word vocabulary, you can also read those words and if you have an orthographic lexicon, you can spell those words as well, which is quite a lot. And they're all separate forms of language, right. But anyway, 30 to 70,000 is the pantry, is the ingredients of language. That you're working with 30 to 70,000 units, which is insanely good, right, it's just awe-inspiring. Now, you did not acquire those 30,000 to 70,000 units from your teacher having a list, right, there was no, there is no.

Melissa:

That would be a lot of lists.

Lyn Stone:

That's a huge list. Imagine that at 10 a week. Okay, can you see? That's not how we acquire our vocabulary, what we do, still not enough.

Lori:

10 a week. Can you see? That's not how we acquire our vocabulary, what we do Still not enough.

Lyn Stone:

10 a week, I know You'd be there until you were the oldest person in the world plus some, right? So that's not how it happens. It doesn't happen like that. That's not how we acquire language. It's not how we build our lexicon. We can facilitate the building of our lexicon though lexicon. We can facilitate the building of our lexicon, though, and teachers can facilitate that by coming up with really good examples of words and word families, right, and discovering them.

Lyn Stone:

So back to that list thing. If you want to know what the word, what the right words should be, I'd like to get you to ask a better question. There's a better question here, right? And the better question is what is the family that these words belong to? How are they related to one another? Because, instead of studying one word, you've got four or five, six words that have got that pattern or have got that morpheme or have got that etymology, and now we're really talking about building a mental model of how the writing system works. So the best word list is a book and that your choice of words. It's only ever going to be exemplars of the 30 to 70,000 words that you build through speaking and listening, through reading and through writing.

Melissa:

Lyn can you give an example of that family that you were? Just I know?

Lyn Stone:

I'm asking you to like pull it out of your head, but just so people know what you mean. Luckily, there's lots in my head when it comes to this stuff, so you know so that's one of my favorite ones, and I did this quite recently with a student.

Lyn Stone:

It's the word candle. Right, that's a great word, candle, you know. Blow out the candle and so on. Turns out that canned bit light or fire, right, comes in incandescent as well. So that's light that you get from heat. So canned incandescent, I love that. That's a great family, that's one I love.

Lyn Stone:

There's probably other words in the candle family, but off the top of my head I don't know now, so I'd have to look that up. But yeah, so you can study candle and you can go. Oh well, let me see, that's two syllables, and the first syllable is CDC and the second syllable is consonant plus LE. There's the syllable types Hooray, let's move on right. Or you can go see that base cand that's in this word incandescent. What a cool word that is. I know which one I would choose. So that's what I mean by families and that information is freely available. It's not like you have to carry it in your head. You can figure all of that out. So I'd encourage teachers to do that, and it's a big ask, I know. So you've got to do a lot more in your day than just go on Etim online and you know, have you know rapture over words, but still.

Melissa:

Oh, I just learned that chandeliers I knew there was another one.

Lyn Stone:

Yes, that's right, yeah.

Lori:

Isn't it great, oh my gosh, it's joyful. It's so fun. It's so much fun. And they expect. I don't know if it's because we're like word nerds or what, but we want everyone.

Melissa:

And it's like a little puzzle when you hear and you're like oh, like that does fit right. It's like it fits together. I see it.

Lyn Stone:

Your brain just grew your brain just grew in your pathway and you know which is really nice, and we want everyone to be word nerds. It's not that I want the children to then be able to spell chandelier and incandescent, right. It's not that. It's that we're setting the scene and we're helping them build schemas, and schemas are mental models of things, and you can build those mental models or you can have everything in silos with no connection to each other, and you're going to build your lexicon much slower that way.

Lyn Stone:

I know that there comes a point when you're building your lexicon and I remember being conscious of it where you go. Oh, I can see where all the dots join. I could see it in my head where they're all joined right and how they all join together. Something that's really handy for that is learning other languages as well. So I learned dutch and I learned french. I learned german and latin. So I was lucky in that I had those other vocabularies um to, to fall back on and make those connections as well. So you know, this is another thing I recommend in primary school especially. It's that children start to learn other languages.

Melissa:

And is that especially true for English, like for people learning English to know other languages, because I feel like English is kind of a mishmash of so many different languages.

Lyn Stone:

Yes, it can. It can be, I suppose, because it has it. You know, there are lots of words in English, and there are lots of words that mean almost the same thing, because of the migration patterns of humans. You know, visiting the British or Romance languages, or both, is incredibly helpful, you know, for building again your English lexicon. So, yeah, languages other than English, no matter what they are, though, are good to study, and it's funny because people who don't speak English as their native language basically learn their native language and English, because that's the lingua franca of the world of business and commerce and trade, and, you know, science and everything. So everyone learns English, but the English speaking people just learn English, which is a bit of a shame, because we're completely capable of learning other languages as well.

Lori:

I feel like it's kind of a great good time to say that there are tons of resources. Like I know teachers out there might be wondering, like, what resources do I have for morphology, for etymology and in language, for life? There's. I mean, it's great. It walks you through everything, but at the back, if you really want a list, you kind of did do a list. You did a list of morphemes. Yeah, latin and greek ones.

Lyn Stone:

I, I think you kind of. If you're going to talk about morphology and write about it, you might as well do that list. But I'm not saying to teachers you know, take the first five items and teach that and then test it on friday and move, you know it's a reference point. But yeah, you're right, you caught me. I made a list.

Lori:

It's like it's. This is just it's messy. Yeah, it's, it's. It's not as clean as we I think all would like it to be. You also recommended another resource, which at Plain Talk, which I purchased immediately and we've been having a lot of fun with it in our house. It's called Once Upon a.

Lori:

Word. I've been looking at my Amazon order on my phone I couldn't remember the name of the book Once Upon a Word, a word origin dictionary for kids, and that has been really fun to see if the words that we're pulling out of the books that we're reading are in that word origin dictionary. So those resources I think are really cool and usable for teachers and students.

Lyn Stone:

They're lovely, they're absolutely lovely. Do you have anything else? Yes, I'm glad you asked Because, for students as well, there's this book that we sometimes use as well and it's called House Ox Stick and it's an etymology of the alphabet. So it takes every letter of the alphabet and it goes this is what it used to look, look like, or this is why we've brought it in to our present alphabet and with beautiful illustrations and really, really at that kid level but hugely enlightening for teachers as well. So it's got that dual purpose of of giving, of expanding our knowledge, and giving us a vehicle to expand the knowledge of children as well. It's called Ox House Stick.

Melissa:

I'm not good with the order of stuff. No, that's okay, I was just Googling, so I'm making sure I have the right one.

Lyn Stone:

I've got it on the shelf behind me, but yeah, I prefer to keep my eyes on the screen. So sorry about that. Yeah, so what is it? Ox House, stick that way round.

Lori:

Ox House Stick. Sorry about that, yeah, so what? What is it? Oxhouse stick that way around? I gotta remember that. Oh hs, yep, got it. Okay, we'll link it. We'll link it.

Melissa:

I'm just curious. I we feel like we've touched on this already, but I just want to like make it super clear for people and make sure they they're taking away the right thing that what I hear us talking about this whole time is that both etymology and morphology can be helpful for all parts of reading. I want to say, when they're spelling, it can help students when they're comprehending or making meaning of the text, and it can help in all of those places. Is that correct to say, Lyn? And then can you tell a little bit about how it helps for each?

Lyn Stone:

Yeah, again, I'm speaking from two perspectives. So the first one is a perspective of a practitioner who has succeeded over and over again to teach children to read and write. So you know, you've got my anecdotes there, which are not, you know, they're anecdotes, but they're anecdotes of a fairly long and successful career in intervention. So they have some. I don't know truth to them, I guess or use maybe, but it's also backed up with. There is quite compelling research about morphology, about word parts and how that's very helpful for helping to embed those higher levels of vocabulary in students. If you want the names of the studies, I'll come back to you with those because, again, I don't carry those in my head at all. So I'll look them up for you. But there is, you know, when, when I succeed at something in my career, I go I have to reverse, engineer that and go well, why, why? Why did that work it's? It's not enough just to go, ooh, that works and then try to market that it's. Why did that work? What is it, what are the components of that? And so I will look for reasons why that worked, and then that also helps me to tweak what I'm already doing. So one of the things that was transformative for us at Lifelong Literacy and for the tutors that work with my students is that we did two things that really changed things for us. And then I had to look for oh, why is that? How come that worked? Because I did it from instinct more than anything else. One of the things is that we shifted our focus from reading to writing. So say, you're in a 45-minute session with a student, what we used to do was maybe 35 minutes of reading interventions, so we'd warm up with phonemic awareness and we'd get a text and we'd decode it and we'd look at component parts and we'd drill. You know, like I'm showing you SH, what sound, shh great. I'm saying shh what. Write it down. You know all that sort of stuff. That's all reading type work. Let's do this for fluency. Read that again with your voice better, and what did that mean? And so on. Right, so we did that.

Lyn Stone:

When we shifted for 10 minutes of reading as opposed to 35 minutes of writing, two things happened over time. One of the things that happened was that the children got better at writing. Of course they did right, because we were practicing writing, but they also got better at reading. When we were just focusing on reading. They got better at reading but they didn't get better at writing. So that was one thing where word parts and things like again it's inextricable etymology, morphology, phonology as well. They all join together to make help children form robust mental orthographic images of words. So that's placing words into long-term memory. They all help them to do that. When we got them to write the words rather than just read or recognize the words, that strengthened it even further for them. And I'm talking about children who have developmental disorders of literacy, dyslexia, dysgraphia and other problems with memory or working memory and processing speed and so on. So I'm talking about a population that usually gets absolutely missed out in general education and they became better at reading and writing. So that transformed what we did and their path. So I hope that's answering your question, melissa.

Lyn Stone:

But then there was another part as well, and the other part that transformed things for us was when we stopped giving them words and sentences and paragraphs on decontextualized things, you know. So if we're studying the word, let's say we're studying the grapheme CK, and I want them to be able to use that grapheme and to know that it doesn't occur at the beginning of English words and it's usually after a single vowel and so on. Right In the old days, I would just take any random word and I'd go hey, this word thick, right, this is an example of that. Right, and this word think, the k in think is just a k on its own, because you can't use ck after a consonant right, except for max plank. But that's a whole different thing, right, okay, we won't go down that path just yet. Right, so, right, so, um, well, it would be random.

Lyn Stone:

Whereas when I started looking at the work of natalie wexler, judith hochman, I realized that we needed to build knowledge, and that realization also came from a trend, a worrying trend, that I saw in the students that we were working with over the last 20 years, and what I was seeing with them was a knowledge gap as well. I saw that these children didn't know the days of the week, the months of the year, they didn't know, they couldn't recite those, and that's very basic stuff. What else didn't they know? It turns out quite a lot, because during their primary education they were doing decontextualized stuff that never built into anything either. So there was this knowledge gap. So there were being taught things like let's do inferencing this year. Right. So for a whole year they would do blah, blah, inferencing on stuff that wasn't related, the topics that weren't related to one another, and their knowledge was suffering.

Lyn Stone:

So when we started to, instead of just take random words and random sentences, when we started to build knowledge with that and stick to one subject. So now that CK graphene well, we're studying birds A baby bird is a chick, right? So chick is going to be more relevant and part of that mental model than you know the word thick or the word stick, unless you're saying you build a nest with sticks and so on. Do you know what I'm saying? So when we came away from random and went into knowledge building, that transformed the progress of the response to intervention as well. And therefore, if you've got a better response to intervention, you kind of know that at tier one, if you're doing something like that, you're going to then prevent rather than have to intervene. You're building fences at the top of the cliff rather than being an ambulance at the bottom, which you know isn't ideal.

Lori:

That's fascinating. It really aligns, too, with some of the ahas that we had as we started learning about knowledge building, and it makes me think about a quote. I'm not going to get it right, melissa, because I didn't pull it up exactly, but spoiler alert for anyone listening. We have Doug Fisher later on this summer, and it's making me think of something that he said during the podcast. He said every writer is a good reader, but not every reader is a good writer. Am I right, melissa? Do you remember that? I don't.

Melissa:

I don't remember. Or good readers, good writers are.

Lori:

That was the gist, for sure, that was the gist. I was like I'm trying to get it verbatim, it's not going to happen, but that it feels. That feels like exactly what you're saying, Lyn right, Like if you can do it one way, you're not necessarily able to reverse it, but if you can reverse it, you can do both. Yep absolutely.

Lyn Stone:

Reading and writing are not the flip side of one another. That's really, really, really not true. Reading is a sub-skill of writing. You've got to be able to have an understanding of how the graphemes go together and the morphemes go together to make words, to be able to write. And you can stop right there. You can stop at reading and never, ever write a word, but you can't get to writing unless you do have that basic foundational knowledge of how it all goes together, and that comes through reading. So, yeah, it's a little bit daunting and a little bit frightening to go. I'm not going to focus on reading. What do you mean? Little bit frightening to go? I'm not going to focus on reading. What do you mean? It's not called the writing league right, it's not.

Lori:

You know, what do you mean?

Lyn Stone:

I'm not going to talk about reading as much yeah.

Melissa:

What about the science of reading? Oh my gosh, you know it's not called.

Lyn Stone:

That's what everyone's talking about. Exactly Like. This is a huge word, you know, and we've done a really, really good job, I think, of even making that part of the national conversation Just reading itself. But hey, you know, got bad news for you guys Writing's the hard part, reading's a piece of cake, right, relatively speaking.

Melissa:

And I'm not saying that to insult anybody- who hasn't acquired reading.

Lyn Stone:

I don't, I don't mean that, but you know I've. I've worked in special ed for a long time and it was absolutely a no brainer that every child that came to see us would end up reading like course, course, but not writing. You never, ever, took that for granted, because as a practitioner you know that that is tough, it's really tough and it's not the same.

Lori:

Yeah, it is so tough, that is such a difficult skill to write well and to be able to have the knowledge of the topic to do it. I feel like when we can support students in any area like that, that's helpful to get them to. I mean, they're removing that knowledge piece they can. If we're giving them that right, then they have more time, more space in their brain freed up for all the other tasks that are difficult with writing, so they don't have to think about, well, what am I writing about? I have that knowledge and and now I, you know, I, I've, I've been studying birds I know that a chick is a is a baby, you know. So I can put that together, yeah.

Lyn Stone:

Yeah, and they support one another, of course. I mean the more you read, the better it is for you in terms of your spelling, because you get this exposure again. You know, statistically speaking, to what, what the common patterns are and what the constraints are in language. You've got to read. But of the first things that we do with a student is we say this is how you improve your spelling, even if you never come to see us again. And the first thing that you need to do is read. You need to read a lot and they support one another.

Lyn Stone:

Of course they build, but with reading and writing there are finite and constrained skills that we want children to become automatic at as quickly as possible, and that's decoding and that's spelling and punctuation. We want them to be able to not have to think about that so that they can get over to the really nice parts where they become increasingly strategic. If you think of the reading rope, even even the simple view of reading. We want them to be concretely strategic at linguistic comprehension and at text generation and we get through that by giving them those skills early and well when you're making me think too.

Melissa:

I know we've talked mostly. We wanted to stay focused on etymology and vocabulary during this, but now I'm. Now I just have a quick question because we've talked about writing and I just read the Language for Life and I want to know do you want to talk at all about this idea of grammar, because I know that is another one where it's often painfully boring in school and very disconnected from the other work that's happening. Do you want to talk a bit about the power of it and maybe some best practices?

Lyn Stone:

Sure, Do I want to talk about grammar? No, I never want to talk about grammar. It's just a terrible subject, it's not useful at all and I hardly think about it ever. Grammar and syntax I think gosh right, it's so cool because what, what it is, what grammar and syntax is is the outward expression of the workings of the inner mind. Right, the way that words go together and the relationships that they have. They're like people, it's like Melrose Place. Okay, a sentence is like a soap opera, right, because it's got these components, all with their individual personalities, but not just their personalities, their relationships, the way that they have power over one another, the way that they govern one another, the way that they skew one another, that you can place a word before another word and suddenly the sentence means a completely different thing. I mean, you know grammar and syntax. I've never heard grammar.

Melissa:

It sounds so cool.

Lori:

I'm very excited right now. I want to know where Lyn was when I was in sixth grade, with a purple piece of chalk, having to deconstruct a sentence.

Lyn Stone:

Really. Look, I love that deconstructing of sentences. But yeah, I know that you're reading and you know I don't want to be too kind of product specific. But yeah, I know that you're reading and I don't want to be too kind of product specific here. But I know that you're reading Language for Life right now. That edition of Language for Life doesn't have my thinking on it regarding the personalities and the relationships quite as much as this new edition that I'm working on has. So I'm handing in the manuscript for that on the 1st of September fingers crossed, barring any cataclysms. I'm handing that in and then that will go through its publishing process and be released sometime next year. Now that has got things like. I've got to show you this since you asked. It's got their personalities and illustrations.

Lyn Stone:

So pronouns right are syntactic stunt doubles so we've got this woman, a stunt double, dressed up in her stunt kit, with her motorbike helmet under her arm, and they have really brought the whole personality and relationships thing into it and I think it's a good idea. It's a really good idea and kids dig it. So we can always make it more interesting. But it comes back down to teacher knowledge. What I'm really trying to do is get that idea into teachers that this isn't just a noun, is a naming word. Let's move on. It's like a noun. They're syntactic royalty. They have servants.

Lyn Stone:

Did you know that they have like a whole retinue of words that only work for nouns and won't work for anyone else? Nouns? Did you know that they have like a whole retinue of words that only work for nouns and won't work for anyone else? Nouns are the only words that have that. They've got these servants, you know. They've got pronouns that come in for them. They've got determiners that kind of go hey, everybody, look busy, a noun's coming. They've got adjectives they're the only ones that describe nouns. And they've got prepositions that will connect nouns to everything else. That's amazing, right, but nobody ever talks about that. It's just a noun is a naming word. It's not.

Lyn Stone:

It's a soap opera out there folks.

Lori:

I know I was thinking as you were talking. If this were like the middle ages, you could probably create like a whole cool chart with, like, the hierarchy of the grammar system, although Melrose Place is like maybe a good college version.

Lyn Stone:

Yeah, it's kind of outdated too. You know, anybody sort of born after 1990 will have no idea what I'm talking about there. But at least I didn't say at least I didn't say dynasty right, at least I said Melrose Place, which was a bit more modern.

Lori:

Oh, so that's a good one that we say differently. Oh, you say dynasty.

Lyn Stone:

Dynasty.

Lori:

And you know.

Melissa:

I say dynamite.

Lyn Stone:

I don't say dynamite because it's all to do with power, right D-Y-N? Yeah, it's to do with power. So you know, pronunciation never consistent. But boy, that morpheme's consistent, isn't it?

Lori:

So there's a teachable moment. So can I ask you a question? Can I ask a question that's been like I've been thinking about, since you were talking about the playing with words, with morphology, and then we connected it to writing. Is there, have you ever seen kids in their editing process feel more comfortable moving things around? After they feel good about playing with words and like moving the word parts around and exploring that? Do you ever see that transfer into writing? Because I always felt like when I was a teacher, the hardest part was to get kids to edit and to move parts around and to get excited about, oh, you know, changing this part or that part or switching it from start to the end of the sentence, to the beginning. And wouldn't that sound more exciting? Because they were like no, I did it, I'm done, I just I just want to hand it in and I already wrote it down. You know we weren't doing things always on the computer, so again, I'm aging myself right now.

Lyn Stone:

Well, there's two ways. Again, there's two sort of answers I have for that. The first one is that let's face the reality of writing. There's a reality in writing and that reality is this editing is horrible, it's a nightmare, it's unpleasant and, you know, nobody likes it Like I. I could, I could call myself a writer. Now I think I it'd be okay for me to actually use that title, I guess. Right, I call. So I might call myself a writer. But boy, I don't want to go back and look at what I've written.

Lyn Stone:

I would rather do anything else in the world it's like yeah, it's how I developed my incredibly gifted procrastination skills, right, just from having to edit stuff. I'm, you know, so good at procrastinating because editing exists. Do you know what I mean? So? So let's face that reality first of all. Okay, that's a real thing and it happens in everybody's brains, right? How do we remedy that?

Lyn Stone:

That's the second part of the question, and the remedy for that is to actually make sure again, it's about proportions, it's about numbers, it's about percentages and to make sure that when you are actually doing a writing focus and when you're in a writing block, for instance in your literacy block, that you reduce the drafting time and you increase the editing time. And the way that you do that is using work like Hockman and Wexler. Again, they really put into a very, very structured way of how to recognize what fragments are and know how you can manipulate fragments of sentences to make really good sentences in a way that doesn't actually kill you with boredom, right? So that's my review of the writing revolution. Basically, it's the remedy for editing boredom, right? So, yeah, hopefully that gives you some insight into how, maybe to help. It's about proportion and it's about intentionally working with that manipulation of sentence parts, and that comes from fragments, it comes from a positives, it comes from conjunctions and so on. So yeah, hockman and Wexler, there isn't a better resource for that.

Lori:

I don't think, yeah, and I have the book right here. So if you're watching, you're watching. Here's the book, If you here, so if you're watching you're watching.

Melissa:

Here's the book.

Lori:

If you're not. If you're listening, we had them on the podcast, so we'll make sure to link that episode too, so you can learn more about the writing revolution. I'm wondering, though, lyn, if we might want to kind of bring this home with some practical ways teachers can apply what we talked about today. Do you have any recommendations for teachers? I don't know. Three sounds like a nice round number, but I will leave it up to you.

Lyn Stone:

Firstly, don't reinvent the wheel. If you are going to build knowledge and get students to write about it, there will be a text out there that you can use. You don't have to rewrite and invent new texts and have that as part of your planning. So there are lots of resources for that core knowledge and even, dare I say, chat GPT. You can actually go to that bot now and say write me a short paragraph for grade three on ravens, and they'll give you a framework so that you can then work from that. You can even go put more adjectives in, because we're studying adjectives right now, or I want more words that have CK in them, and so on. You can do that. You can make the bot do that Right.

Lyn Stone:

So that's the first thing Use what's around you rather than thinking that you have to come up with all of this stuff yourself, because that's the first thing Use what's around you rather than thinking that you have to come up with all of this stuff yourself, because that's a nightmare for teachers. It's a lot of work In terms of again writing. When it comes to grammar and syntax, make sure you, as a teacher, are really comfortable with what the parts of speech are and how they relate to one another, and there's plenty of training out there. There are plenty of resources about that. Your dictionary is a really, really good resource. On your computer you have something that will tell you what part of speech a word is and all the different parts of speech it could be, depending on where they are in the sentence. So, again, there is a resource for that already. Become familiar with that, because that's going to help you answer all of those sticky questions.

Lyn Stone:

And then, thirdly, the big tip really is understanding and being happy to grow your understanding of how words are formed and what those word parts are. And that comes from this understanding that every word is a base, and we're coming right back to where we started Every word is a base or contains a base, even if it doesn't look like it. If you can figure out and find ways to figure out what that is, you're laughing and you'll never, ever be disappointed. It's always, always enlightening and fun. We love that. Thank you so much, an enormous pleasure. Thank you Again. I'm honored, really honored, to sit amongst your guests and look forward to hearing lots more of your podcasts.

Melissa:

To stay connected with us, sign up for our email list at literacypodcastcom, join our Facebook group and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

Lori:

If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share with a teacher friend or leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Melissa:

Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests of the Melissa and Lori Love Literacy Podcast are not necessarily the opinions of Great Minds, pbc or its employees.

Lori:

We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to learn with us. Thank you.