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Building Your Scientifically-Based ELA Block with Jamey Peavler

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Episode 243

Jamey Peavler discusses the importance of recognizing the varied learning needs of students in all grades! She emphasizes the distinction between comprehension and word recognition skills, advocating for differentiated instruction to better support each student's unique learning journey.

Key Takeaways

  • Word recognition and comprehension can develop at different rates.
  • Differentiated instruction is essential for meeting diverse learning needs.
  • Teachers should empower themselves to adapt their teaching methods.
  • Effective teaching requires awareness of students' varying skill levels.
  • Teachers play a crucial role in bridging the gap between comprehension and skill.


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.

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Lori:

If you're a teacher wondering how to fit everything into your ELA block, this episode is for you. Students need both word recognition and language comprehension, but it's tricky to structure time for both.

Melissa:

That's why we're talking to Jamie Peavler, a professor at Mount St. Joseph University. She'll help us to connect the research on effective literacy instruction to what an ELA block can actually look like for your students.

Lori:

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.

Melissa:

Lori and I can't wait to keep learning with you today. Hi, Jamie. Welcome to the podcast. We are so excited you're here. I know I saw your session on this same topic at the Readingly conference about a year ago. And you've been on our list ever since to get on to talk about it. So I'm glad that it's finally happening. Well, thanks.

Jamey Peavler:

I'm excited to be here today.

Lori:

Yeah. So, Jamie, we're going to jump right in. We want to start with the simple view of reading. And we would love for you to explain what it is and why it's so important for designing your ELA block.

Jamey Peavler:

Okay. Well, I think for many of us in pre-service education, we think about reading as one component. And so we struggle with, you know, what does that look like and how are we going to teach? And for me, the simple view of reading really made that process less cumbersome and confusing because it outlines that reading actually isn't one thing that we teach. It's really two buckets of skills that students have to develop a level of proficiency with in order to become skilled readers. And because my career started in primary, I feel like that model is something I really should have understood working with early readers because what it defines is this bucket of skills that we call word recognition is really sometimes what we might see in our state standards as foundational skills, things like letter knowledge, phonemic awareness, and eventually getting to the alphabetic principle to sound out unknown words and to spell words in our writing. And so often students have a level of proficiency there that's very different from the level of proficiency they have with the other bucket, language comprehension. And I think the best way to illustrate that is we may, as primary teachers, have students that can absolutely understand a chapter book if we read it to them, but they don't have the same level of word recognition skills to read that chapter book on their own. And so when I understood that those two buckets of skills were distinct and might not always develop at the same rate and might be stronger in one student than in another student, and yet we have the same standards to cover, I felt more empowered then to truly differentiate my instruction and meet kids where they are. So I really think that's an important framework for us to keep in mind as we're planning, delivering, and even assessing students in their proficiency levels.

Melissa:

Yeah, that's so important. And you know, I always think about my son because he's in first grade. So, you know, I get I got to see this firsthand. But that like not developing in tandem makes so much sense because I mean he has been this language comprehension he's been doing since he was really, really little, right? Just learning words and me reading out loud to him and all of that. And, you know, we we really waited until he got to school to start working on those foundational skills and and the all of that. So yeah, it definitely doesn't happen at the same time. Uh, but I'm wondering what that means for teachers. You know, we we want to keep bringing this back to the the ELA block today. So why is it important to have like these two distinct blocks for both word recognition and language comprehension?

Jamey Peavler:

Well, I think for two reasons. One is it gives us more flexibility to meet students where they are, acknowledging that sometimes their language comprehension skills are far exceeding their word recognition skills. Um, because if if we don't have that separation, we may be forced to make an uncomfortable decision, which is, well, I'm I'm choosing a text. Do I choose a text that's at their listening comprehension level, or do I choose a text that's at their word recognition level? Because if I have to decide one or the other, I'm probably going to end up in a situation where I've actually decreased the level of text that they can understand for the purpose of meeting them where they are for what they can decode. And there are consequences to that. One consequence to that would be if we are only using text that students can independently read, think about those early readers or even those older readers that are more like early readers in terms of their decoding level. What we're doing is we're preventing them from having access to text that has really risked a rich and robust vocabulary that has well-constructed sentences that provides them with access to important knowledge. And we're doing that because we want them to be able to read it on their own. So then, really down the road over time, we've accumulated a lot of instructional minutes for practicing word recognition, but we've come up deficient in language comprehension content. So that's a concern. The other one is that those skills develop at different rates that we've talked about, but they also develop differently. So language comprehension skills really don't have to be sequenced in a very linear and structured way. They are more fluid, but word recognition skills do require a very systematic, explicit, thoughtful instructional sequence. For instance, if I have a student who is having some difficulty with word recognition, I can't bypass the skills that they haven't acquired and say, yeah, I know you're a third grader, and we're reading multisyllabic words. So I need you to read them too, but I know that you actually are still struggling to sound out single syllable words, but that's what I need to put you in. That's a consequence that we can't really afford to do either, because a child who has that gap in what the grade level expectation is and where they currently perform really does need us to meet them where they are so that we can intensify and close the gap for them. We can't just pretend that they're going to make the leap simply from, you know, from exposure. So a consequence to even having kids read a text independently for comprehension could be that it's not accessible to them because that text is too difficult for what they can decode anyway. So now they're at a double deficit of not having the rich language comprehension and also not having the word recognition support that they need.

Lori:

Yeah, Jamie, you're making me think about this idea that Melissa and I, when we present, we talk a lot about, which is constrained and unconstrained skills. Um, would you be able to define those for our listeners and just explain why it matters? I think you touched on it, but just really be let's be explicit about why it matters for instruction in this way.

Jamey Peavler:

Yes, you're right. Because that really is a key difference in word recognition and language. So I think a high-level overview of what those terms mean. Constrained skills tend to be skills that are somewhat limited. And so once we have covered them, we can actually move on to application of those things. So a simple example would be something like letter knowledge. So we are limited. We only have 26 letters. And once students have become proficient on naming those letters, um, forming them correctly when they're dictated, we actually can move on to applying them. We don't need to have a placeholder in our instructional day to keep revisiting letters. And we're not inventing new letters, so we don't have to always have this coming back and hitting them again. I don't want to then imply that constrained skills are a small number of skills, because an example not related to literacy would be math pack fluency. Those are constrained skills. There's a lot of math facts to know, but we're not inventing new ones all the time. And then another characteristic of a constraint skill is that it's pretty easy to isolate and measure. It's really easy for us to know if students recognize letters. And what's nice about that is in terms of assessments and decision making, we have a pretty systematic process of assessing and reteaching and remediating. So that isolation of variables is important. But also related to constrained skills, they do need to develop in a systematic order. So we can't support students to blend and spell words if they don't know their letters yet. You can't bypass that. So order matters when it comes to constrained skills. And then when we think about all those characteristics, you might be recognizing that we tend to label those types of things as low-level skills. And so we unfortunately in the last couple of decades have given a bad rap to those low-level skills. We think, oh, they're not rigorous enough, we shouldn't be spending a lot of time. But really, we have to think about them as the essential building blocks for higher-level processes. And so all of those types of constrained skills tend to really fall into that bucket of word recognition. And so, if we think about, you know, this kind of accumulation of skills and this progression of skills over time, it really does argue that that word recognition component of our block may need to be more targeted towards meeting kids where they are in this level of progression. And, you know, again, it's not surprising when we think about the characteristics that we tend to have more assessments for constrained skills and we tend to be more comfortable making decisions about them. But on the flip side of that, our unconstrained skills are a little messier. They're tending to be more unlimited. And so vocabulary would be an example of that. We are never going to run out of vocabulary words to teach, and we are always inventing new ones or reinventing ones to mean something different than they meant before. And then also unconstrained skills tend to be really tightly interconnected, meaning that, you know, language comprehension, for instance, is such that if a child doesn't understand text, maybe that I've read with them or that we're talking about, it is really hard to detangle. Was that lack of understanding a symptom of a vocabulary issue? Was it because they didn't have the knowledge of the subject? Could it have been that the author constructed these sentences in a really awkward way that made it hard for them to deconstruct, especially because the pronoun in that sentence referred back to a noun that was four or five sentences ago? So when those things happen, it does really, again, make it hard to get good data and good decisions. So that to me would be the big, you know, deciding factor of is something constrained or unconstrained? How easy is it to isolate? Um, how important is it to teach it in a certain order?

Lori:

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay, so this is making me think so much. Melissa and I, when we when we present at conferences and stuff, we love to relate this to sports, this idea of constrained and unconstrained. I appreciate the examples that you gave, and I'm thinking so much about um the essential basics, like just the foundational component of that. Like, you know, how when we are doing sports stuff or learning sports skills, we need to practice the basics over and over and over again. We don't, you know, we don't we don't ever become uh like too good to go back to the basics, right? You're always going back to the basics, but you're also in that bringing in new skills and kind of um, you know, interleaving those other skills along the way. So I I love thinking about it in terms of sports. I think it brings a lot of clarity. Like if I was a coach listening right now, I'd be thinking about how I could relate this and connect this to sports, this idea of how we're building the ELA block and including those constrained and unconstrained skills in the word recognition and the language comprehension strands and and thinking about how I'm gonna do that in the spirit of maybe some analogies to sports for my teachers as I'm thinking about the ELA block.

Jamey Peavler:

That was a perfect connection. I think about, you know, your drills that you do, like you were just referring to. Um so is it going to be harmful for some of our, you know, our NBA players to work on dribbling drills and three-pointers? Absolutely not. In fact, that's probably a regular routine that they do in their weekly and you know daily practices. So it does fall into that. And so I think when we feel pressure to work on higher level processes and higher level thinking, we may lose sight of the fact that sometimes those constrained skills that we have really dropped off referring to and practicing and assessing from time to time could be explaining why some kids are having difficulty.

Melissa:

Yeah, that's great. And I'm gonna bring us back again to the ELA blocks. So I want to, I want to jump in and talk a little more concretely about both the language comprehension block and the word recognition block. And for a few reasons, I actually want to start with the language comprehension block if you're okay with it. Um, one you already mentioned, which is I know that when this like kind of swing towards the science, I don't want to say pendulum swing, but you know, we've we've kind of gone towards this science of reading. And I think a lot of people equated that with phonics instruction, foundational skills instruction. And I've I heard some people who were like, that was all they were doing during their ELA block, was just the the um word recognition part of the of this of the block. So I want to talk about the language comprehension because it is still a huge part of the science of reading. And I want to make sure that you are telling us why. Um, but also because you mentioned it's an unconstrained skill and it is messier. I'm glad you used that word because we use that word too when we say it's just it is messier. So can you just walk us through like what should be happening during these language comprehension blocks that we want to make sure all teachers are still doing, even if they're aligning their instruction to the science of reading?

Jamey Peavler:

Right. Well, I think we look at the research first. And so if I look at the work by Oakville Cain and Elbro as Hugh Katz and Daniel Willingham and many of the other people who really have focused their life's work on understanding what causes us to understand and not understand text or even spoken language, it points to really three key areas. One is knowledge. How much do we understand about the subject matter in the text itself? And so we know that if you come to the table with a little bit of knowledge of the subject matter, you will more efficiently acquire new information than someone who has no idea of what the subject matter is going to be about. So a key component of comprehension is acquiring knowledge and building knowledge. Another variable is vocabulary, which overset or intersects and overlaps with knowledge quite a bit. Um, because obviously domain-specific vocabulary is associated with the knowledge of the subject matter. But it's not just the domain-specific vocabulary, it's really the depth of vocabulary that you have in general and the breadth of vocabulary that you have. So now we start to really get into morphology and semantics and um those types of components. So we need that to be a central piece of our language comprehension block. And then the third, which until recently I felt like really overlooked, was syntactic knowledge and syntactic awareness. And so it's our ability to understand at a sentence level what an author or a speaker is saying that really will predict how well we understand at a paragraph level or at a text level. And so what often interferes with the ability to understand sentence level, you know, communication beyond vocabulary and knowledge is how well do I understand how sentences work? How well can I deconstruct them? How well can I figure out that there was an implied subject? The author didn't come right out and tell us what the subject was, but it was implied. And so those are the three things that I put at the center of my comprehension instruction. And as I do that, you might be thinking, well, I didn't hear you say comprehension skills and strategies. And for many of us, and I can speak for myself, for the 20 years that I was a classroom teacher, that was the focus of my comprehension work, was main idea and inferring and cause and effect. Same here, Jamie.

Melissa:

Same here.

Jamey Peavler:

See, okay, good. We're in good company. Um, I don't mean to imply that there's no place for that, not important because the research says otherwise. But what the research says is we probably are making that too much of a focus. And it does have a place. But what I am suggesting that we consider is we put that towards the end of our instruction and we don't lead with it. So here's an example. In um my role as a classroom teacher, I would often look at the pacing guide, and the pacing guide might say, Hey, this week we're working on cause and effect. So then I would try to see if the story in our curriculum lent itself to cause and effect, and often it didn't. So I would have to find something else to bring in. And so then really I had to kind of water down both things to cover everything. Now, what I'm thinking and what I'm finding is if I take a text that is meaningful to teach and I make the priority knowledge building and vocabulary building, and I read out loud to the kids and I really treat it like I'm the tour guide in that passage and not I am a person who is just, you know, checking their understanding formally at the end, but I'm a tour guide and I'm walking them through the text. Then what that looks like is as I'm reading, I'm making sure that I'm stopping and I'm checking to see if they understand, or I'm checking to see if the sentences make sense. Then I'm taking that comprehension skill or strategy and I'm going, actually, you know what? This text, it really lends itself nicely to cause and effect. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna point out this word where the author said unlike, and I'm gonna pause and I'm gonna ask the students, hey, wait, they're comparing something. Oops, I said cause and effect. So let's stick with the cause and effect example, or as a result of. So when I pull in that as a result of, I'm gonna say, oh, they just told us this thing made this next thing happen. So there's a cause and effect relationship. So I do it authentically in the text. And then after the reading, we can do a more formal application of that if we want to, but it is not the focus of the comprehension instruction.

Lori:

Yeah, and Jamie, something I'm thinking about too, just to add to what you said for the cause and effect example is, you know, I don't think you're saying teachers, you know, as you're doing this authentically, you know, don't have a anchor chart that helps students identify text structure. I think actually that's really helpful and research analysis is really helpful for what we do it authentically within the text. We're not saying like we're reading this text or to find cause and effect, or it's that you're authentically modeling it, finding it, teaching it in the moment, and then you can say, oh, this is like a really great example of a text structure for let's add it to our infrastructure as an example, and maybe we even have some sentence stems or frames that help us identify cause and effect. So in the future, it's like giving our brain a little light bulb, like, oh, I see these words as a result. Oh, I know those are words that signify cause and effect for me. Like, is that a great tip for teachers who are listening? Like, is that the way, like, not the way, one way we might approach it?

Jamey Peavler:

Absolutely. So, even referring back to previous anchor charts where you've put some of those connectives in place to, you know, help them see this is why we talked about this. But you're absolutely right. And when you're doing this in the text authentically, you're gonna find that you have increased the retrieval opportunities for students to apply what you've taught them previously. And that gets us away from these settings where we might spend two weeks on main idea and supporting details, and then we move on to another comprehension skill or strategy, only to find that a month later they don't remember main idea and supporting details. So when we're doing it authentically in the text, then kids start to see that this will help them check their understanding. Um, and so that these are tools that enhance comprehension. They are not things our teacher makes us do in reading.

Melissa:

Yeah, I know we've talked about it before on other podcasts, but it also is like not the reason we read books, right? So teaching kids that we read books to find the main idea isn't all that exciting versus we read books to learn from them is much more authentic and interesting for students.

unknown:

All right.

Lori:

So, Jamie, we would be remiss if if we didn't ask you a question here about intervention and how we address intervention with certain aspects of language comprehension, because as you said, it is messy. It's hard to know exactly what the issue is. Um, what supports tend to be more effective than others when it comes to intervention for language comprehension?

Jamey Peavler:

Yeah, I think it comes back to, again, their unconstrained skills, which means we have a harder time isolating the variables for data collection and data analysis. And intervention should always be driven by data. So, to make this a little easier for teachers, one of the ways that I approach language comprehension interventions is thinking about what's generalizable and is a good return on investment, and what is less generalizable. So, if we start with what's generalizable, we know that vocabulary in some aspects is generalizable, and that would be more morphology. So if I can intervene, whether it's oral only, because I have a younger student who can't yet decode some of those words, but if I intervene with morphology and teaching meaningful parts and how you know a word can be deconstructed into meaningful parts so we can approximate the meaning, that's a generalizable intervention that should translate to lots of different texts. Also syntax and syntax knowledge. And so that is generalizable. It doesn't really matter what the passage is. Um, and then the things that are less generalizable that may be trickier to do for an intervention are those specific knowledge building pieces and the domain-specific vocabulary. So, how we would address those in intervention would be to identify the students that are probably going to be at risk of not understanding the text for those two reasons. And in that situation, the intervention would take on a front loading design. So two weeks before we even teach the subject matter, I might front load knowledge for them that I know that they probably don't have. And I can do that in the form of pictures, I can do that in the form of pre-reading different texts, um, looking at diagrams. So vocabulary and knowledge building that are again front loaded before we get to a text would be an ideal intervention in that situation.

Lori:

That's really helpful. I love that. And that I like breaking it into those different categories. How would it look, just to go back to your first example with the generalizable interventions, vocabulary syntax, would that be within the context or would we do that perhaps like before and also during? I just want to make sure I'm clarifying for listeners who might be wondering that.

Jamey Peavler:

Right. No, that's a good follow-up question. I think what I would do first, because we do tend to have better assessments related to syntax knowledge, um, I would go ahead and give more of a diagnostic to see do they understand that a sentence has both a who or a subject, depending on the age of the student we're talking about, and a do or predicate. And are they understanding even some of the terms that we need to have common language around, like a pronoun replacing a noun? So I may do more of a systematic, almost looking like a word recognition intervention, where I have a scope and sequence and it's really independent of the text that we're working on in class. However, another support that I would provide for them is pulling in that instruction when we are doing our during reading. And I anticipate a confusing sentence. And I may say to them, I'm gonna read the sentence and then we're gonna break it into it's who and it's do. Um and then I want you to tell me the where phrase that you you heard. So I'm gonna make sure the language I use to support them to understand the text completely represents and mirrors the language that I used in the intervention.

Lori:

Such a great tip. Consistent language, does that remove the cognitive barrier or the cognitive load for our students?

Jamey Peavler:

It does because when you and I are using different terms with a student, there will be a lot of students who have no idea you and I are talking about the same thing. And so that intervention that you may have provided that was so powerful, I as a classroom teacher can't really leverage because I used different terminology.

Lori:

Such a good point. Okay, so for anyone listening who's um perhaps we are working or a classroom teacher working with an interventionist or a classroom teacher working with um a teacher who's working with multilingual learners. We want to make sure that our language is consistent across that's like a really practical, school-wide way to address some of this. Uh, I love it. That's really helpful too. And like a great tip for structuring your ELA block. Like, let's get common language on the board as well.

Jamey Peavler:

We may have feelings about what those terms should be, but for the sake of the kids, we're gonna work through them 100%.

Lori:

And I mean, who in the do? So simple. That's I mean, I'm just giving a plug for that one.

Melissa:

Clean up some of that messiness that already exists, right?

Lori:

Sweep it up for the new year.

Melissa:

Okay, so I want to make sure we have enough time for the other part of the block, the ELA block, which is the word recognition. And we want to know from you, of course, what are the key components of this word recognition block. But I also am curious because I imagine this looks very different from a kindergarten to first grade block to a second grade block. Um, so as you're explaining, if you want to talk to about like the differences across those grade levels, that would be really helpful.

Jamey Peavler:

Okay. So we're back again to those constrained skills for word recognition, and they do develop in a very linear and systematic way. And so often when I talk about what it could look like across grade levels, I shift my language a little bit to say skill levels, because it really doesn't matter what grade you're in, it matters at what stage of the continuum of word recognition proficiency you're in. Because it is possible that we have a third grader that is in a first grade continuum. So that's really going to drive how much time. So let's revisit that time piece kind of after we talk through the continuum. So the progression is going to be starting off with, you know, two forks in a road that should eventually come together. But one fork in the road is going to be the sensitivity to sounds. So that phonemic awareness piece. And that phonemic awareness piece really is foundational. That without that sensitivity to sounds, both in terms of how we perceive them and how we produce them, if that isn't solid, I am not going to be able to teach you phonics instruction successfully. And that often explains why we may see students who are having really solid structured literacy phonics instruction, but they're not making progress in phonics. It could possibly be that we have this building block in the phonemic area, a phonemic awareness area that is undeveloped. And so that's one end of that fork. The other end of that fork is print knowledge. And so it could even start off with understanding print concepts. And we do have to be aware that we have a lot of students in our schools right now who are coming from home languages that are not left to right, top to bottom progressions. So it may even be starting there, and then it moves into letter knowledge and being able to name letters and form letters, so that handwriting piece too. So those two forks, when they're both developed, should eventually intersect and become the alphabetic principle. That understanding that we use letters to represent sounds. Um, spoken language gets represented by letters on paper. So that's a key and pivotal point in the whole word recognition development. And we do have students in our school settings today who haven't gotten to that pivotal point. And they might have strength in letter knowledge, but weaknesses in phonemic awareness or vice versa. So both have to be solid for that alphabetic principle to be solidified. And once that happens, we're not done with the journey. And I think that's important because for many different instructional materials, that's the target that they're aiming for. But there's a lot more that has to come after that. That's really the beginning of the journey. Um, what has to happen then is we teach kids how English works. And how English works is very predictable. And that really relates to knowledge of syllables and syllable types. And I know that tends to be a little bit of an area of controversy, and I actually don't think it should be because I think the controversy really stems from us kind of talking past each other and not getting common understandings around the objectives of syllable types. So for instance, if students know that, you know, when I see two vowels and they are organized such that there's a single vowel followed by a single consonant and an E, that it likely is a magic E syllable, and that that E is probably going to make that vowel in front of it say its name and it will remain silent, then that unlocks for me this generalization opportunity to go, well, I've never seen this word before, but I know it says make because. And then it really reduces down the number of words that maybe don't play that way, like have, where I go, well, wait a minute, that A isn't saying A, it's not have. Oh, that's right. That's because. When a V is at the end of a syllable, it has to have an E because no English word ends in V, it's always followed by a silent E. So I have to flex the vowel. So the thing with syllable types is it gives students this opportunity to be more independent in reading something they've never seen before. What I don't need students to do is read the word cake and go, I wonder what kind of syllable that is. Because that defeats the purpose. If I can read the word, who cares what kind of syllable it is? So I think that's where we really have to kind of get on the same page with its impact. But alphabetic principle comes first, then syllable types, then syllable division. And same thing. If I can read a multisyllabic word, who cares if it's a VCCV word or not? But if I can't read the word, I need a reliable strategy to figure out how to divide it and apply my knowledge of syllable types to decode it accurately. So that's how that progression works. And then eventually we get into morphology, which by the way, it does toggle both word recognition and language comprehension buckets. So back to your question around how would that look in different grades? Well, it really depends on where in that continuum a student is. So if I am a first grader and I am right at that alphabetic principle piece of the continuum and I am moving into syllable types, I probably need anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes a day on word recognition because I need to continue to review the skills I've learned and I need to get them closer to high levels of application, like reading decodable text. And then I need to acquire new skills. But if I'm a fourth grader and I might, I'm at that same point, 45 minutes is probably not enough for me. I probably do need a 45 minute piece of instruction on my level where I am, not a fourth grade multisyllabic morphology lesson, because I'm not ready for that. That's only going to cause high cognitive load and probably result in some frustration and behavior challenges. But I may need 45 minutes at my level and then another 15 or 20 of intensification to close that gap because I need to accelerate through the scope and sequence.

Lori:

Okay, so I feel like now we might be getting into a little bit of intervention. And perhaps we should name some of the ways that you could intervene. Um I'm thinking about this like a walk-to-read model, Jamie. I know there's a lot of conversation around what intervention would look like or could look like school-wide, um, grade level wide. I mean, we could even say classroom-wide. Um, so uh we I kind of want to throw a situation at you, a scenario at you, and and maybe you could react to it. Does that sound okay? Perfect. All right. All right. So um also I want to name like differentiation is a huge challenge for for I think for teachers. I think it's really hard for them. So um if we make our if we're trying to make sure that students are getting the you know, the word recognition skills that they need. If we think about, let's think about a third-grade classroom, right? I might be a third-grade teacher and five students who are still decoding at a first grade level. So we know that exposure alone is not enough. They need more. We need some targeted, like systematic instruction and foundational skills for it. So I'm gonna call out a model like walk to read. Can you explain what walk to read is and and like how it might help teachers or how it might help that third grade teacher meet the students' needs in word recognition? Yes.

Jamey Peavler:

And third grade is a great place to start that conversation because by the time we get to third grade, we're gonna see this range of skills in our classroom that's pretty hard to manage. And as a classroom teacher myself, there's no way that I could have taught six different word recognition lessons in my classroom. That would have had me teaching word recognition for half the day at least. So I think asking teachers to differentiate like that is not really a reasonable expectation or an ask. But if what we do instead, keeping in mind that we can separate language comprehension and word recognition, if we can organize our block such that those two pieces are distinct, and that perhaps I have a 35 or 45 minute word recognition block that is separate from my 30 to 45 minute comprehension block, I can leverage that schedule a little bit and say, no, I alone cannot teach. And let's just get the number down to something manageable. I alone cannot teach four different word recognition lessons, but I do have three colleagues in my grade level. And if we share students among ourselves, we could have four different word recognition lessons happening each day. And that means we share kids. I have students that go to my colleagues, they have students that come to me, and that puts us at different parts in our or points in our scope and sequence. I might be on lesson 12 because I have the group that needs the most support. You might be on lesson 20. Other people in our group might be on lesson 35, which is actually the grade level target. And then we even have some students who really don't look like third graders at all. And so they've accelerated and they're on lesson 50. So that differentiation with, you know, phonics and word recognition doesn't always have to be within your class, it can be across classrooms. And if you have extra hands on deck, maybe you are a school with inclusion support or title support, that's the optimal time to use those extra hands on deck because then you can be even more differentiated. So if there are four of us in a grade level, but there happen to be two or three additional support members, we could break our groups down into seven as long as we have a schedule that allows us to have a common word recognition time. The difference though, because I often when I present that to people and I hear this kind of, well, isn't that tracking? Because I thought we decided in the 1980s that was tracking and that that was bad. It would be tracking if we kept students in these groups all year long and we didn't provide an opportunity for those lowest groups to get caught up. You're absolutely right. That would be tracking and that would not be beneficial. But if we do have this really coordinated effort in our building, what would happen is those groups who were behind, they wouldn't have, because they probably are kids who are getting tier two and tier three instruction, they wouldn't have a tier two intervention that was different with a different curriculum and a different person. They would have the next lesson in the scope and sequence during tier two. So if they got lesson 20 with me in the morning, they might get lesson 21 in the afternoon. Tomorrow morning they get 22. In the afternoon, they get 23. And all of a sudden, we start to accelerate these students through the scope and sequence so that they actually start to close the proficiency gap.

Lori:

Jamie, one follow-up, because again, I'm thinking about that third grade teacher or even a second grade teacher who's seeing bigger gaps emerge. Would the students for their word recognition block are they um doing this mod are we doing this model for the entirety of their instruction, or are they at some point receiving what we might say as grade level instruction?

Jamey Peavler:

Yes, they would be getting grade level instruction. It just wouldn't be in word recognition. It would be in language comp. And the reason it would be in language comprehension is because, again, there's no one level for language comprehension, especially if we are not asking kids to read the text and we are reading it to them, which we should be, because the ideal text for language comprehension is text kids can't read on their own anyway. That's where the robust vocabulary knowledge building comes in. So students would stay in their homeroom and we would be doing the listening comprehension work of grade level skills and standards and content. But word recognition is not where we would be getting our grade level content because those skills are so constrained and progress that teaching me here when I'm really at this level of skill set doesn't make sense for me because I don't understand what you're talking about anyway, and I'm not able to apply what you're teaching me, and you're creating a lot of cognitive load. The best way to get me here is not an exposure model, it's an access model. And it's stair-stepping students more efficiently towards that eventual target.

Lori:

Yeah, I feel like it would be the equivalent in math of asking students to like do long division when we haven't taught any other prerequisite skills, right? If we're just like really like tangibly trying to put a little comparison there. Like we haven't taught any of the prerequisite skills, but we're like, here, do this long division, but you don't actually don't know how to add, subtract, like very constrained skills that can be taught.

Jamey Peavler:

Absolutely. And even just, you know, a related example that we don't, we don't do, we would never do this to students. Put them in Spanish four and then say, but during your intervention, you can have Spanish one. You know, we have this prerequisite structure on purpose because we know that, but for whatever reason, over you know, the last couple of decades, we have really shifted to this exposure model. And exposure isn't always effective. In fact, when it comes to constrained skills, it actually is harmful, which is to me no wonder why we have so many disengagement and behavior challenges, especially in reading instruction for a lot of students.

Melissa:

Jimmy, I have so many questions for you. One thing I'm thinking about is I did see a post from Stephanie Staller at some point where she said that, you know, she's definitely a proponent of this model for sure. But she said, you know, maybe in kindergarten, you might not use this model because the skill gap might not be even wide enough that you you even need it. And I'm curious too, because in at my son's school, and I think this is a pretty common thing, is that they get the um foundational skills instruction, the word recognition instruction in their grade level. So he's in first grade, he gets that with his class, and then they have a separate time. Sometimes it's called like a win time, what I need time. They call it something different, but it's all the same thing, right? They then have that, it looks, it sounds very similar to what you're talking about, but it's not that first round of teaching. It's like a second round of teaching. Um, can you talk just a little bit about both of those things? Like, is there a time to use one or the other of these models? Are there pros and cons? Should we really all try to shift towards the walk to read? What are your thoughts on that?

Jamey Peavler:

Yeah, that's that's loaded and really important for us to break down. So I think it does come down to is there a gap between what some students in the classroom need and where other students are? And if the gap is so wide that there is an increase in errors, an increase in frustration, a lack of progress, and that's another important reason to progress monitor. But when we see that kids are not making progress and any of those other characteristics are showing up, you know, again, whether it's behavior or participation, then that justifies an examination of the data to see should we split into a walk-to-read skill-based grouping model. If we're not seeing that division, but we do see that some students are just having a harder time, then really that intensification in a second period in a win time or a success time is probably sufficient. But it's only going to be effective if data is actually identifying what skills those students need to beef up or solidify. Instead, what I tend to see is we just pull another off-the-shelf curriculum out, and there may be a complete disconnect between what they're doing in that 30-minute block of time and what they did in class. So, you know, simply pulling them out and providing more instruction is a false sense of security. We have to ensure that what we're pulling them out for actually does align to what we know is the need. So, ideally, you know, in terms of the capacity that schools have, I've never met a school that says we have enough people to do the work and we have enough time to do the things. That that just has not been my reality. So I think we do have to acknowledge that schools have limitations in their schedules and in their human resources. So for many schools, a walk-to-read model is going to require resources that they don't necessarily have. So the model of everyone gets the same thing, and then we kind of intensify in a second dose might be their only option. If that's the case, we again need to acknowledge that there that will only be effective if those two blocks of time are coordinated efforts. But ideally, a walk-to-read model, anytime we have that range of skills, um, that is going to be a more effective and efficient way of closing the gap. Again, requiring a coordinated effort to make sure that we are providing kids intensification or acceleration to get closer to where they should be.

Melissa:

Yeah, I'm just I'm so glad that you said, you know, it really depends on your students and what they need. Because I think oftentimes we see these things and it's like, someone said we have to do a walk to read. We have to do a walk to read, but you know, it depends on what your students need. And it might be that you don't need it in kindergarten, but you need it in first grade or you need it in, you know, it it really depends on what your students need. And I'm glad that you brought that up and don't just have everyone running to do it just because. Um, but I am also glad that you brought up the idea of like this can be tough for schools and for teachers and for teachers especially, you know, this has to be a school-wide thing happening or at least a grade level. It can't just be something one teacher does. So I'm just curious if you have any suggestions if a teacher is listening right now and thinking, well, I would love to do that, but no one at my school is even talking about it. Is there anything they can do to either, you know, get some other people on board, or is there anything they can do in their own classrooms to kind of try and get something like this happening?

Jamey Peavler:

Well, I think the first thing is, you know, kind of talking about what are the worries, you know, what are the things that are holding us back? And um often it is, you know, a well-intended worry, which is I'm responsible for these students and I don't really know that I want to let go of that responsibility and give it to a colleague. I respect my colleague, I value their knowledge, but ultimately it comes down to me. And I'm gonna be honest that I can relate to that when it comes to, you know, leaving my husband in charge. You know, like I know how I do things, I trust you, but are you gonna do it the way I do it? So I think the first thing that we have to do is, you know, honor that, that that could be a worry. And how would we address that? And so sometimes we can address that through what I call calibration. And that means let's just see, maybe we're doing things similarly and we don't realize it. I mean, how often do we get to spend time in each other's classrooms seeing what we do with each other, you know, um, or what we do with our kids? So in a grade level meeting, we may just do some role playing. So I might teach part of my word recognition lesson and you're my student, and then we switch and you're the teacher and I'm your student. And then we just debrief on what we did that was the same and what we did that was different. And are those differences okay? Or could those differences potentially be confusing to kids if we share? So that calibration part is one. The other part is maybe we just don't even see that there is a need for this. And so I think data is your go-to for that problem, which is do we have students who are not making progress? Because probably in all of our classrooms, that isn't a yes. We do have some kids who are not progressing. Then we have to get into why are they not progressing? So, what do we know is preventing them from growing? And so that comes down to what I can't teach four different skills in my my classroom, and neither can you. Can we divide the workload and share it better? Uh so I think it really just depends on what are the hiccups and the concerns to know how to address them.

Lori:

Yeah, that's so helpful. I'm so glad that you brought up all of these really practical components teachers listening can can resonate with. And I mean, yeah, it is such a real thing to be like, oh, I don't know about this. So thank you for for explaining that as well. Jamie, it seems like we're heading to the end of our time together today. So I want you to think about one big takeaway you'd like teachers to remember about building their scientifically based ELA block. What would that one thing be if you could share with teachers right now?

Jamey Peavler:

So I think it's acknowledging that the pressure that we probably are feeling is getting kids ready for high-stakes assessments. Even if we're in a primary classroom, we're feeling the pressure. Certainly, those teachers and intermediate grades are feeling that. And so when we think about the structure of high-stakes assessments, they are reading comprehension assessments. And what I would really ask you to consider is just because that's this kind of looming thing for us to address, doesn't mean that our block has to reflect a reading comprehension outcome measure. Because, you know, really simulating that testing structure of giving kids kind of independent cold read passages and assessing them and thinking we're getting them ready for high stakes has not yielded good outcomes. But if we really separate those blocks and we identify what kids need and we meet them where they are and we provide high quality instruction, although it might not look like the same high-stakes assessment that they're taking, it is far more effective at getting them close to skilled reading. So, you know, I think it would be really trust the research, also trust your intuition that you probably already realize that simulated testing is not improving students' reading proficiency, but teaching them the things they need to know is. And so again, just really perfecting your profession and talking to each other and having authentic conversations, being humble enough to say, I don't know, or I don't understand, or I'm unsure. Um, you know, I think that was the best professional advice I ever got is being able to say, I don't know. I probably do say it a little more each day than I should out loud, but I definitely um have found that is an effective way to continue to grow.

Lori:

I love that. Well, thank you for sharing us with us all of the things you actually do know today. We appreciate that. Um, and you know, not just you, but so much research you've gathered to share. Um, we're so grateful. And we know that it's going to help teachers really refine their ELA block at this point in the year and bring all of that knowledge into even the new school year uh ahead of us a few months down the road. So thank you so much, Jamie. Thank you.

Melissa:

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Lori:

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Melissa:

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Lori:

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