Melissa & Lori Love Literacy ® | Science of Reading for Teachers

Small-Group Interventions That Actually Work with Kerry Cusick & Erin Sharon

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Episode 248

There’s a saying we hear often in literacy work: you don’t want to try to intervene your way out of a Tier 1 problem. Real change happens when classroom instruction and small-group support are aligned.

In this episode, we’re joined by Kerry Cusick and Erin Sharon, two reading interventionists, who share how aligning Tier 1 instruction with the small-group work they lead every day transformed both their approach and student outcomes. While their work lives in intervention, the routines and decision-making they describe are just as relevant for classroom teachers running small groups.

In this conversation, we explore:

  • What small-group intervention looked like before alignment and what had to change
  • How clearer, more consistent Tier 1 instruction reshaped small-group teaching
  • What responsive small-group lessons look like when they’re built around student need
  • How phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and meaning work together in small groups
  • Why fluency matters and how routines move students from sounds to connected text

Kerry and Erin share practical examples from their MTSS work, including how they use data to form groups, align with classroom scope and sequence, and design small-group instruction that builds accuracy, automaticity, and meaning.

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You Can’t Fix Tier One With Interventions

Melissa

We often hear the saying, you can't intervene your way out of a tier one problem. What that really means is that intervention works best when tier one instruction is strong.

Lori

Today we're talking with Kerry Cusick and Erin Sharon about how strengthening Tier One instruction changed their intervention work in small groups, leading to better outcomes for students. 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, Carrie and Erin. We're so excited to have you two on the podcast. We've heard so many great things about all the work you're doing. So we're excited to hear about it.

Erin Sharon

Thank you. So excited to be here. It's like a dream come true.

Lori

Yeah, we're gonna jump right in because we know that one thing that you said is that your team used to try to intervene their way out of a tier one problem. So let's just dive right in with this really important fact, right? You can't intervene your way out of a tier one problem. Um, but what did that look like in practice? And when did you realize something had to shift?

Meet Carrie And Erin

Erin Sharon

So for me, I actually joined a school that they already had identified that they did need to shift. And so they were kind of in the very beginning stages of shifting from balanced literacy, learning about the science of reading, but they didn't have anything solid in place for a tier one yet. So I was providing intervention for students who weren't getting structured literacy in their classroom. So I was taking them into my room and doing a really nice structured literacy lesson, but it wasn't, it wasn't a double dose. Um, it wasn't connected to what they were doing in their classroom. I didn't even necessarily know what they were doing in their classroom because they were all kind of doing different things. And so if I have a group with kids from different classrooms, I don't know who knows what besides the assessments that I've already done. Um so that made it really challenging. And so I was feeling like I was kind of the first line of defense. I was teaching them everything from scratch and a lot of work at the word level and reading accurately. And then once they got there, it felt like I had to move on because they just were so far behind. And it was a lot of pressure to kind of catch them up. Um, and it just wasn't effective and it wasn't sustainable. And I just like I think about that quote like, uh, would you rather have a fence at the top of the cliff or an ambulance at the bottom? And I definitely felt like the ambulance at the bottom, except I just like had band-aids in my ambulance. Like it just wasn't, it wasn't helpful.

The Balanced Literacy To Science Of Reading Shift

Melissa

Yeah, I love that analogy of the um the ambulance. I I knew one of like about teaching, like, do we teach them to swim or do we just hire a lot more lifeguards to help them when they're drowning? You know, it's like, no, we want to teach them to swim. So I love this idea of you know, the tier one has to be good because we can't rely on just hiring more interventionists and and that's going to fix the problem. I know that oftentimes it feels that way as a teacher because you're like, well, just get someone to help, right? But if if we're not doing the the right thing in our classrooms, and um, it's not always a teacher's fault. It's what the curriculum might be, is what it sounds like in the case of your schools. So it sounds like the biggest thing is that we need this tier one instruction to be solid for the intervention to be effective. So can you all talk a little bit now? Like, what do your schools look like now? What does the tier one instruction look like in your schools now? And what does your intervention kind of look like to match that?

Kerry Cusick

Sure. I think our tier one is pretty consistent with our schools for Erin and I, where in K to three we have a very explicit systematic phonics program. And then in four to six, it's a little bit more um not as consistent, let's just say that. There's teachers that have learned more about say morphology or learned more about say word work, and it's sort of more in sections, I'd say, throughout. However, our K to six knowledge building program is consistent school-wide. So that other part of our language comprehension reading rote piece, that sound K to six, but um for like that word work piece and for more of that phonics morphology, that's a little bit more morphing and growing.

Why Alignment Matters For Double Dosing

Erin Sharon

And yeah, so our tier one looks relatively similar. And just to add, like when it comes to intervention, because of those changes, I now am able to plan my intervention in a way that is aligned to the tier one instruction. So students are learning a concept in class. And then when they come to me, I know that whatever I'm teaching them, it's not the first time they've heard it. They've at least been introduced to it, had some practice with it. Are they proficient with it? Probably not, but that's what I'm there for. We can practice. Um, and we can uh I don't have to just work on accuracy anymore. Now I can work on building automaticity, applying those skills to connected text, where before, like I wasn't even able really to get there. And now now I can't. Now I am a double-do. So I'm not on, I don't feel like I'm on my own anymore.

Kerry Cusick

Right. And I think that's where we see growth happen too. Actually, I think that's where we see much more growth happen, is that now that that is sound and more fluent in like tier one, it's so much stronger for us. And we can have, I used to always say at our school that, you know, some of these kids were lifers in intervention. And we don't want them to be lifers. We want them to fly and we want them to get the tools they need to then be independent and to succeed in the classroom setting, along with other kids that are receiving tier one instruction. And I think that's where we've seen more growth in that because we've had a solid tier one now, um, which makes us happy as reading specialists for sure.

Lori

I was hoping that you could kind of give a little snapshot of what happens when students come to you for intervention. Because, you know, I'm curious, like you went from accuracy to automaticity. You're able to have students apply to connected text. You're seeing the progress. And it sounds to me like the progress is happening more quickly, um, just you know, from what you're what you're saying. So, what actually happens when students come to you? Like, are there specific components that of a lesson that you're working through? Um, is there a routine or anything that you're doing consistently? I'd love to hear it.

Erin Sharon

Um, so I can start with what happens in my classroom. It's um pretty much the same every day when they first come in. I have like the f the same first three steps. So the kids come in my room, they all sit on the rug, they know exactly where to go, and I start with a visual drill. So I have the grapheme up on the board, and the kids say CH spells sh or SH spells sh and it's choral response. Everybody is expected to participate. They might be able to get away with like moving their mouth in their classroom. Like those are those kids that are likely to be less engaged, but they know in my classroom they are responding. So that's the first part is that visual drill.

Melissa

How many students do you have, Erin? I'm just curious. As I'm picturing this, I wasn't.

Erin Sharon

Sorry, yeah, I try to keep it under four.

Melissa

That makes sense. Yep. Then they can't hide, right?

What Tier One Looks Like Now

From Accuracy To Automaticity

Erin Sharon

Exactly. Yep. And if somebody doesn't respond, I model the correct response and then I expect them to give it. So they're pretty good about that now. Um and then the second part that I always do is a quick auditory drill. So I use those little LCD tablets. Um you can get them really cheap on Amazon. It's just like a little rectangle, and they have their battery, they run on a little battery and they come with a pen. Um, and the kids just love using those. So that's what I always use for my auditory drill. So I say a sound, I say ch and they have to write ch. Um I use this more of as like a retrieval practice. So I'm not modeling for them. I expect them to know these sounds and how to spell them. And we use the same routine every day for that. And I always pick things like I always do B, I always do D, I always do short E, I always do short I, and then go from there because those are the ones that kids are constantly mixing up. Um, and then the third part that I always do is I do some type of warm-up, like automaticity with um words that have skills that have previously been taught. So maybe even though I'm working on silent E words, I'm doing this warm-up with CDC words with short or words with short vowels because I know we need to, we can't leave that alone. So that's kind of like the first one-third of my lesson. And then from there, I work on a new, well, a new concept that's really a review concept. So let's say I pick SH. I'm working on SH over the next two or three days and kind of building upon that in that second chunk of my lesson, um, starting with explicit reteaching. So I'm teaching a same lesson that has been taught in the classroom before. Um we're reading words with that concept, we're spelling words, and we're doing word work. And that might be my day one with that. And then the next day we do those same first three things, and get then we get back into that concept, that SH concept. And maybe the next day we're reading um those words and phrases, and we're reading words and sentences, and um I'm dictating sentences for them to write. And then on the third day, we do those same first three things, and then we're reading um a decodable book with words with SH. And um, I also want to point out that the sentences and phrases that I did the day before come from that decodable text. So it's not the first time that they've seen it. Um, and then I'll usually do some type of quick assessment on words with SH. Um, reading universe has quick phonics assessments for like any phonics concept you can imagine. It has words in isolation and words in sentences. Um, and so I've been using those just really quick, call kids over at the end of the lesson. So that's kind of what it looks like in my classroom.

Kerry Cusick

And I echo a lot of those same things that occur with mine. I might speak to the upper grades a little bit more too. Um, with the upper grades, I actually, you know, I swear by backwards planning, right? Sort of what Erin said when you can pull things from the text to really plan your entire lesson. For upper grades, I may not do a heavy decodable as much, but I may link more to morphology and affixes, suffixes, prefixes, and then a lot of knowledge building. So I'm a huge fan of the anticipation guides with my upper grades. So I may have a passage about a certain topic. And I, you know, I think anything from things like ReadWorks, um I actually use some from Read Live as well, um, that have these great passages, and I may get more information about a certain topic and then have some questions, true, false, multiple choice. And sometimes when I was doing these, kids would get so stressed, this excuse, I don't know the answer. Just try, we're gonna read about it and learn more. So I think that piece really built momentum for them to then say, okay, I'm accessing what I know, but I'm gonna build on that and then have this engagement there for them to read more. Um, and I think linking all of that in with that morphology piece, have it be affixes, because that's where I do link in the visual drill, the auditory drill, having those pieces from the text that it may not be a decodable text, but it's still something that we can really grapple with and sort of work with and gain knowledge from. Um, so similar to the flow of what Aaron's done, I think that structured literacy approach to how we plan has really been effective for our readers all throughout for K to five and six.

Inside An Intervention Lesson Routine

Lori

Carrie, when you're doing this morphology piece with the older readers, are you doing, are you, are you teaching some explicit stuff? Are you working some in context? Like, how is it working? Could you elaborate a little bit more on that? My teacher brain is is wanting to hear more.

Kerry Cusick

I love it. Morphology is like my jam. Like I like love it because I think it's a piece that um I've learned a lot through IMZ, I've learned a lot through crafting minds about morphology. And for me, it was such a separate entity at first. I was like, okay, I'm just gonna do morphology for my grades of three to six. That's it. And then as I've learned more, I've said, oh, wait a second, I can do it with suffix s. I can do it with suffix ES. When kids can understand the meaning of what a suffix or prefix can carry, it can totally take them so many places for reading those multisyllabic words, for becoming more fluent decoders. So I think I've tried to embed it um with vocabulary as well. I might do a frayer model for like word meaning. I might do a vocabulary web for multiple meaning words. And I think that's a piece that, you know, if you see the word bat, oh, it can mean little animal, it can be a baseball bat. I have to bat something away, you know. So those pieces, kids can read that word, it's a C V C word, but when you can incorporate so much more of really like the meaning and the word making to that, it makes such a difference for kids. Um, and I think morphology, there's such a sequence we can support for kids for Greek and Latin roots to really take them places to become stronger knowledge builders and meaning makers all throughout.

Lori

Yeah, thank you for that. So, my next follow-up question, I'm gonna direct it first to you, Carrie, and then Erin. I'd love for you to chime in with kind of the lower grade version of the response. But how do you each decide who gets this support? And like how does it look different based on students' needs? And, you know, Carrie, I'm thinking a lot about what you just shared in the context of morphology. And I'm just thinking, wow, that would really benefit all students. So it must be really difficult to, you know, choose which students are getting that support. So I I'm particularly gonna, I'm interested in in your answer, Carrie, because I'm gonna throw it to you first. But Aaron, I think it's equally as important for the younger grades, and it might be a little bit more nuanced for the younger grades.

Upper Grades: Morphology And Knowledge

Kerry Cusick

So I think we've come a long way at my school. We have a pretty dynamic process for really determining who can receive the additional support of myself or others in my school. And we do a lot with our screeners from Bibles to iReady. We might do additional screeners if kids are in the red or yellow to see if there's, you know, something else that's like an untimed version with a quick phonic screener, even like high frequency words for San Diego assessment. And then we meet as a team. That shared responsibility has come so far. So between our math specialists and our STEM coach and our literacy coaches and all of those people, and then admin and classroom teachers, and we really like dissect the data to look at it and say, okay, where are our kids falling? Where are our most striving readers? Okay, those need the most intense support, say from me, and the really through this MTSS, that multi-tiered systems of support model through my school. Um, we have it with all grades, which is wonderful. But then what happens is that this piece of, okay, let's have this approach of more of a not just a pullout for Carrie Cusick, let's have a support model where it's a shared responsibility of, oh, classroom teachers, you know, hey, what about if you can do a lesson on morph, you can do this group on morphology because that's where it's showing up on some vocabulary pieces on these assessments and screeners. So there's a lot of um, we call it in our school feeding the hungry. I once had a mentor that would say, Carrie, you are such a sponge. You need to be able to share that knowledge with others, and you're gonna find that others want it. They might just not be a spokal issue. So just like sort of feed that, like share articles, share things like that. So I think that's where we've come really far to say, like, okay, this is what we need to give kids now in this moment. And it's not gonna be the whole year, but we can do this for a cycle of time, and then we progress monitor with um just Dibbles M class usually for our data and do other check-ins to see over time. Um dictation is a great piece too, to see that um piece connected to that phonics piece, see how kids are growing and teacher input is huge is huge. You know, in my in my world, the kids that I see, we communicate all the time, but their feedback about how they're doing in the knowledge building program as well is crucial and huge. So it's a big process, I'd say, um, to get there. And it took um the piece first of saying, okay, it was always outside. We need more bodies, we need more people to do this. But we've come so far, based on unfortunately budget cuts, but to say, actually, we have such a no great piece here with all of our stakeholders. Like, let's make it work within the confines of our school of what we have and supporting them through that to learn and to grow with their instruction. So I think that's sort of where we've morphed the best.

Who Gets Support And How We Decide

Erin Sharon

Um, so we do administer Dibbles school-wide, district-wide, and that's really the main screener that we use to determine who needs support. And then we give diagnostic assessments like a core phonic survey or a letters assessment, any of those types of um phonics assessments to figure out what type of support they might need and figure out a starting point. Um, and just thinking about how that morphology does weave in to lessons with the younger grades. Um, it's not really a matter of figuring out who needs it. If you're getting my reading support, you're going to get morphology in your lessons. Because if you're struggling with word recognition, that's a very important part of it. And so I like to say, like all of my interventions, it's not really a phonics intervention, it's not a fluency intervention, it's not a morphology intervention, it's a multi-componential intervention and we're hitting everything. Um, and so what the morphology might look like with the lower grades, as Carrie mentioned, like that suffix S or the E D. Um, and our phonics program does include reading words with those endings, and I just really try to emphasize the meaning. So if I'm doing word work um with words with a suffix s, instead of saying like, okay, have the word cat, add an S to the end of the word. Now, what's the word? Cats. Instead of that, I say something like add the ending that will make it mean more than one cat. So just like that prompting and weaving it into those components, I find helpful. Same with like ED. I have students read the base word first and then we'll say, and if it already happened, and then they read the whole word. So like if the word was walk, which probably would not be my word, but like let's say the word was walk, they or the word was walked, they would read the base word is walk, but if I already did it, walked. So we're like incorporating it right into that practice.

Lori

So I feel like you're incorporating a lot of retrieval practice within.

Erin Sharon

Yes. Well, and that is a huge part, is is just spiraling, like making sure you know what we did before. Because I do see that when especially like I just think of my first graders with silent E. I sort of mentioned this already, but it's something that I see a lot of is that once that silent E is introduced, all of a sudden they forget the short vowels. And so when I progress monitor, their their score goes down with those short vowel nonsense words because now they're thinking, like, I don't know, is it a short vowel or a long vowel? And so we have to really keep going back to keep those earlier skills solid.

Lori

Can you imagine like the existential crisis happening in their brains at that moment? Like, I've just gotten all this new information and now I have to make big decisions about what happens when I say these words. I didn't think about it like that until you just said it, Aaron. Yeah, now there's way more. Oh no. Oh, their brains are working so hard, that's why they come home from school so tired.

Melissa

They do come home so tired. It's so true. I have a first grader who comes home tired every day. So, Aaron, you really read my mind because as I was listening to you all, I was thinking like this feels different than I think a lot of people think about intervention or even small group instruction. Whereas I think oftentimes it's like you kind of you you assess your students and find out, okay, they need this thing. They need help with fluency or they need help with phonemic awareness, or sometimes it's even like the standards, which we don't need to get into that, but they need help with finding the main idea. Um, and they get kind of put in this bucket, and then it's like, okay, that's what we're working on. So let's jump into the first one with like, how do you start like phonemic awareness? Should be something they do in kindergarten, should be something they do really early and not for a long time on its own. So, how do you weave that into your routines for the students that do still need it?

Multi‑Component Intervention In K–2

Kerry Cusick

I think um one of the biggest things that we both are consistent with is that we're trying to link so much more in K to two with letters too and bringing that piece in. So have it be through something with word chains and have it be that's a piece that I think we always do as interventionists, as specialists, to make sure that kids are hearing it. But then okay, let's manipulate the letters too, like what's changing? Is it the initial, medial, or final sound, those pieces? And I think even as the kids, as students, you know, increase in grade level and they may not need so much more of the phonemic awareness work. We're embedding it so much more through our dictation and our spelling and our mapping of words. And I think that's the biggest piece. I'll always say okay what are the sounds that you hear? What are our options? You know, those pieces I think and how many sounds do you hear in this word? I think that's where the shift happens for older readers to say, okay, hold on, there's Mrs. Fusick in my brain or there's a teacher in my brain saying that to help with that execution of PA skills. Because that's the backbone of everything and that how can we like bridge that much more to blending and segmenting to have that be sound for our manipulation of sound and words. It's crucial.

Phonemic Awareness With Letters Done Right

Erin Sharon

And then I just want to add about the word training and word work. I feel like I talk about this all the time, but I just feel like it's such an important part of the lesson and it can be really effective in building phonemic awareness or it can be like blah. So like your teacher prompting I feel like dictates how much phonemic awareness practice you get. So if I have my word chain and I say okay build the word ship and kids make the word ship and then they I say change I say oh shop great like that's not really building in phonemic awareness. But if I have the word ship and I say okay say ship they say ship say the sounds in ship share segmenting those sounds first that's phonemic awareness. That's segmenting. And then they're saying shh it's s h it's I it's p pulling down those letters. So that prompting that I gave prompted them to segment sounds to then encode. And then I can also weave in blending to decode. So I can say change I to read the new word and then they have to say shop shop. And so there's my blending phonemes with letters added. And so I think there's like a lot of talk about phonemic awareness with letters or without letters and I just think like that's what we mean when we say phonemic awareness with letters is you're still segmenting and you're still blending, but you're also encoding or decoding.

Melissa

Yeah there's always the you're gonna hear people always say that it is not phonemic awareness anymore because you've added the letters because you know somewhere that definition got a little mucked up and we think that if we do add the letters but I love what you're saying is like you're doing it right there together, right? They are hearing it they're hearing those sounds and they are also then changing it or seeing the letters change and you know they can they're doing both. And it's not because you add the letters that it now is no longer phonemic awareness. They are still hearing those sounds and it's really important that they do.

Lori

Yeah and the visual that I had as you were talking Aaron was really just like a reciprocal circle right like a reciprocal arrowed circle that's just they're going back and forth. They're going doing going one way, they're going the other way they're going one way and it's just building those pathways in their brain so the letters are helpful to do that right and coding decoding and they're use you're using the the blending the segmenting to help get to the end goal which is reading.

Melissa

Exactly right so it sounds like these like word chains and um dictation is really doing both phonics and phonemic awareness. But just to hit on phonics a little bit more is are there any other routines you do specifically and and I'm also wondering too just how you make it I I don't want to say just different than what they're getting in tier one because if you said it's aligned what they're doing in tier one, like how do you make it so they're not just like, oh we already did this like I don't want to do it again. So just anything else that you're doing for phonics that you want to share?

Erin Sharon

I mean a lot of what I'm doing is exactly maybe what they've done in their classroom before and a lot of the times I will point out like okay uh Mrs. Jones taught you about CH. Remember that we're gonna practice CH more and it's gonna make it easier for you to read words with CH just to like make it known I know you already were taught this. I get it.

Melissa

And sometimes they'll be so simple but it's so true. Like just address it up front.

Making Aligned Practice Engaging

Erin Sharon

Exactly and they might be like well it already is easy and they'll be like great you're a helper today or something. Yeah be the leader. So I think just pointing out that connection makes it like okay because they're not like well they already did this. And then another thing that I've just noticed that kids make their own connection is that I have the same sound wall in my classroom that the teachers have in their classrooms. Mine's already all built just because I have so many different grade levels and different groups. But let's say I said we're gonna work on CH, I know you already did it and they'll look up at my sound wall and they'll be like oh yeah oh yeah we have that on our sound wall. We did do that. Like they like take ownership of like knowing yeah yeah you're right that is on our sound wall but that's cool. We'll practice it some more. And then I'll just share like one quick activity that I've been doing recently that kids really have fun with and it is taking the same skills that they're doing in class but just kind of gamifying it a little bit. I've been taking um a couple of roll and reads which you can find a lot of different places. So I'll take a few from previous lessons and then I just and if you don't know what a roll and read is it's when there's like the little dice across the top and then columns of words or phrases. So I actually am just cutting the dice right off the top and then cutting the words into strips like columns and then I hand out a strip to each student and I give them like 30 seconds to practice it and then go around and listen to each kid read their whole strip which is six words and they have to read it with 100% accuracy and automaticity and if they do then they earn a new strip. They got another one and then I go to the next kid and they get to practice that one. But if they don't like if they um either are not accurate like they read a BSD or if they if they um have to sound out each word it's just really hard I'll be like I give them feedback and then they keep practicing and then I go to the next kid. So they don't get a new strip yet. But I've just never had kids so engaged in something because they want to get those new strips so bad that like when I'm listening to the next kid, they're like like they are working so hard to get those words right. So I just like share that because it's really easy and it's really um fun for kids. They ask to do it all the time and it keeps them engaged while I'm listening to somebody else read.

Lori

Is there a prize at the end of this or is it just the like the the the holder of all of the strips is super excited because they have a lot of them that is correct.

Erin Sharon

That's it they're like I got three and that's it. Or I'll be like oh time to stop and they're like but I was just gonna get another one like maybe tomorrow.

Lori

Now do they can can they go home and practice those at home or yeah some kids like to take them and some of them don't and I just let them pick. Let it go. Okay. Yep that's very cool. Thank you for showing it's so easy.

Kerry Cusick

And so successful for the kids too. That's like the best part.

Erin Sharon

And they're understanding like I do use the words accuracy and automaticity. I'll tell them well you were accurate but it wasn't quite automatic yet when you practice it a little bit more and get a little bit easier and more automatic.

Kerry Cusick

For me it's making sure that the end goal's in mind. So knowing that if it is a foot it's a phonic skill say on digraphs, I might do something a little bit different based on what they did in the classroom. This is like retrieval practices. I'm a big fan of just trying to make sure that I can embed gamifying activities into my lessons. So I might have redone a shoots and ladders game or I might have redone a guess who or guess the word. I think that's what is key for the kids in our rooms is that engagement because you know they know the routine of coming to my classroom five times a week but what's what's also happening in there can be magical and what can we have the success be like for kids. So yes the roll and reads are great but I think you know they get redundant. So I love Erin's idea of what she's done because I think that's sort of where we can have kids really like meet in the middle of they may have done that in the classroom but let's sort of do a little bit different in our space and we're still getting to the same end goal. Don't break the ice is a huge fan of my my students, um even my own children, but um just because I can put words on those white ice cubes have it be on sticky notes or be like writing on with a whiteboard marker um and that's so fun. And it may get a little loud we may have to close the door but it's fun you know that's success and engagement and that automaticity piece is key for kids. Also I think just any time you have with kids from when you go and pick them up in their classroom to when they go and leave your room the entrance and exit like communication you have with them have it be around phonemic awareness or phonics or anything you know hey remember we did this yesterday we're gonna work on that like suffix again today. You know, that piece I think just sort of gets their mind in a safe safe space um to be ready to learn. So I think that's a nice piece just to sort of have in our back pockets when we work with kids too.

Melissa

Yeah I love that idea of break the ice I'm um I have that game and I'm gonna do it with my son.

Kerry Cusick

Oh he'll love it. First graders love it.

Melissa

Yes um I want to talk a little bit about fluency. I know that I I've been ready to it's one of our favorite things to talk about and um I want to talk about like what routines or tools you use for fluency. But you already have I know what Aaron's already been talking about you know talking to them very specifically about accuracy and automaticity. So you really we're working with them on fluency and I get that goes back to this idea of that it's all integrated which which we really love that you know even though yes I want to talk now about fluency like it are it all kind of meshes together and that makes it really meaningful. But what what other things do you have in your in your uh routines for fluency?

Backward Planning And Rapid Charts

Kerry Cusick

I think the biggest thing for me for fluency is to have that connection from sound to word to phrase to sentence to passage to then story, which is built so much about the breath of a student and you don't get there right from the get-go, but sort of building that capacity for kids to be accurate and and to be automatic. So making sure that they have all those pieces in place is crucial and I think that's how we're so explicit with our instruction and we give that feedback automatically to kids and I think that's where we can embed so much with our high frequency words with phrase reading because I think that's where we you know assess kids on you know our word reading fluency through dibbles but how else are we like embedding that piece you know for kids through our routines through mapping of words through our spelling through our automaticity with reading them so I think the golden piece for me is phrase reading and I think when kids can get that and we scoop phrases and when we can make meaning from those phrases you know what does that picture look like oh on the bench if I was working with you know oh oh the child was on the bench you know those pieces I think that's how fluency can carry meaning over time. And I think phrases are like the secret sauce to that to make sure that kids can make meaning and I think that's where we put a lot of our brunt of our work in my in my room anyway.

Lori

Carrie are there any tools that you use to practice that phrase reading I heard you say scooping um do you have any kind of I I mean I've I've heard of fluency grids or any other tools you could mention?

Kerry Cusick

Yeah I think um fluency grids, rapid naming charts, um rapid recognition charts, all of those so many we can build now on our own, which if we do one in just Google Sheets ourselves or if we do one on a slide or if we actually use um I believe it's through like new house learning has one the rapid generation rapid recognition game maker um which is a great one. So I think anything we can use for those pieces to make it really be that automaticity piece as kids are tracking the phrases going across. And often I might do a little like pause in there like a little image of something and kids get a little movement in. They may stand when they do our a fluency grid. That's some work that we've done in our school just to make that automatic piece happen for kids. And it's interesting that they'll then say oh this phrase or this was in our story too you know so they make that connection over time. But to go from I've made these charts from letters and sounds to then words to then phrases to sentences are a little bit different but then branching it to the passage and text level over time. And that's that fluency piece in action which is great.

Building Meaning, Vocabulary, Morphology

Melissa

That's what I was just going to ask about I assumed that was true but I wanted to make sure it was that you know you're making a connection there between oh they're learning this new sound so those are the sounds that are going to be in the words that they're practicing. Those words end up in the phrases they end up in the passages they end up in the text right like they're connected so it's not just like we're practicing random things here, random things there and random things over here. That's correct, right?

Kerry Cusick

Totally and I think that's where kids are like oh wow this is QSIC like this all it like comes together with for them so much in a different manner because they're seeing of the planning that we go in as teachers to plan these lessons oh yeah I want to be more automatic. Oh this this was right on that page over there. We just said this on the on the whiteboard you know that type of a thing I think that creates more accountability and that also branches to that like retrieval piece too because it's like a piece of oh wow they're like they're bringing it back again and again and again and that cognitive load on their brain has then said okay my memory is like served me correctly here I'm working this toward my fruition here of being successful as a fluent reader.

Melissa

That's what I was going to say it must make them feel more successful too rather than feeling like we practice this over here and now I'm getting something totally new and I don't know it, right? They're feeling like, oh my gosh, I do know this, right? We just did it. So I'm sure it helps them feel that success, which we know that makes them want to keep learning more and more. Yeah.

Lori

And you're all making me think about the connection between what we're talking about and then like vocabulary and morphology and thinking about like just building that meaning and then seeing that consistent across as well. But before we go over there, Erin, did you want to add anything to this conversation? I do want to also ask you about vocabulary and meaning but go ahead and add if you want to add.

Erin Sharon

I just wanted to add that what Carrie was just talking about, just connect it back to what she mentioned earlier about the backward planning. So starting like it doesn't look backwards in your instruction but you start with the end in mind. So Carrie's starting with that passage or book selecting sentences from there to practice selecting phrases from those sentences and selecting words from those phrases practicing sounds from those words but then in your instruction it goes back this way. And then the other thing I wanted to add was with the rapid recognition chart generator if you just Google new house N-E-U-H A U S Education Center rapid rec rapid recognition it'll bring you right to an Excel spreadsheet and all you have to do is type in your five words or your five letters or your five phrases and it automatically generates five different charts for you and it's in a grid that's like five by six or something and it's just the same words repeated over and over again for practice. So just wanted to share kind of what that looks like if if teachers did want to make their own.

Melissa

That's super helpful and we'll link that in the show notes so that if teachers can't find it, they can look in our show notes to get it.

Lori

I I want to track back and see if there's anything that you all want to add to this idea of really like building meaning at all levels, right? So Carrie, you talked about that fluency is moving from sound to word to phrase to sentence passage to full text and then Erin, you really just uh hit home the idea of that backward planning, right? We're starting with that full text, that longer passage in mind, we're back map planning and then it looks it's so seamless moving forward for the students, right? Where we're we're planning with uh the sound and then the word to the phrase and then the sentence and they're like having all these aha moments. But I I want to think about that idea in context of you know building meaning, building vocabulary building morphology what does that look like? How does that play out in terms of a sequence? How do we plan for that?

Where To Start: Culture And Systems

Shared Responsibility And Ongoing Learning

Erin Sharon

Yeah so um I just think I went to a Jan Hasbrook session on fluency and she talked about this triple A framework where she says we have to include accuracy automaticity and access to meaning so those are the triple A's at all of the levels that you just mentioned. And so I started thinking about I'm like okay I'm definitely focusing on accuracy at all of those levels. I'm definitely working on automaticity I'm definitely giving students access to meaning at those higher levels like obviously at the connect to text level we're focused on meaning but how am I incorporating that way down at the sound or word level and so I've tried been trying to think about like am I doing that if not how can I do it more so I can just kind of give an example of at each of those lower levels what does that maybe look like so I'm thinking just at the sound level if it's really basic you know sound a letter and sound it doesn't really have much of a meaning but it does represent something. So one thing that I um I use embedded mnemonics. So if people don't know what that is it's when the picture is illustrated right into the letter. So just the classic I think of is the lowercase A with an apple right inside right inside of it. And A doesn't mean apple, but that allows us to make like a meaningful connection so just that kind of gives kids that like something to hold on to um and I always think of the example my son Eddie when he was first learning his letters anytime he would see an E, he would always say oh E for me. So that letter E carried meaning of him that was personal to him. So I think just little things like that down at that sound level anything that can give meaning it's not just random scribble on a page. And then at the word level there are so many different ways you can incorporate meaning but Carrie mentioned the multiple meaning words and that's something I've been really kind of obsessed with lately. Like having a lot of fun with it with my kids and again I incorporated a lot into that word chaining. So I have that phonemic awareness built in there and the phonics and then I might I'll intentionally pick like three words that I know have multiple meanings which you don't realize how many words have multiple meanings until you until you start looking for them. So like if we're building the word chip I might say all right if I'm if I'm hungry I might eat a chip and kids are reading that word chip again when I say that or on the playground you might pick up a wood chip and they're reading the word chip again and thinking about a different meaning and then usually they'll come up with another meaning like oh oh yeah and if you drop something you might it might get a chip in there or something like that. So just not really doing anything extra necessarily just weaving that into what I'm already doing. And now my kids at home are doing it too. The other day my son was like I said oh that's right and my son was like um yeah I can actually think of three meanings of the word right like okay cool. But it's it's fun like to just get kids thinking in that way of whoa what could this word mean? They become more flexible in their thinking at that level. And then Carrie mentioned with the phrases I feel like the biggest part of using those phrases is giving meaning to those smaller function words like was, is, and where reading in isolation it's like you it's so abstract, it's hard to give them meaning. But when you put in a phrase like cat and dog, oh there's that word and oh yeah that's just the word that is like combining two things. You know, like gives kids that um concept Context to where sometimes kids see the word and in isolation and they have no idea that that is the same word that they're saying when they're talking about my brother and my sister. Um so I just think giving those little connections there.

Kerry Cusick

I think I would just echo too, adding visuals when we can. So if we do say like a word web connecting to a certain word and have it be multiple meaning. Um and I used bat before, but you know, like you've got a flying bat, you've got a baseball bat, you've got to bat your arms, you know, things like that. I think that carries meaning with so many learners, um, multilingual, you know, any type of learner that we have, um, just to sort of have that transfer over to. So I love the piece of those connectors that um Erin said because it's true. Now you have two things, not just one anymore. And that's a connection to meaning as well. So I think all of those things that we can incorporate from fluency to morphology and vocabulary to make meaning is crucial for our kids for sure.

Erin Sharon

And then I wanted to add one more thing about the sentence level. I kind of dropped off and forgot about the sentence level there. I do a lot of picking apart the sentence, like some teachers do the who and the do. Um, oh my who or what is the sentence about? What about them? Like maybe there's a when, maybe there's a why, and then scooping it into those phrases and reading it that way. Um, and then another thing I like to do with sentences is I use AI to make an image of the sentence, and I don't show it to them with the sentence, I put it on the next slide. So after we've done that work, coming up with the meaning of the sentence, then I show them an image of it. And it's just fun. And it allows them to think like, oh yeah, that did have meaning. That that was what we said it was. And they're always like, that's I knew that. I knew that was what that was gonna be. Like, yeah.

Melissa

I love that explicit way of teaching them meaning in the sentence level because I think every time we hear meaning, we think of the vocabulary, you know, but yeah, they also have to make sense of the words together. Um, and that can be hard sometimes. And so taking that time to really, like you said, the who or what is this about and what are they doing and what's happening here really is helpful for students to get that explicit instruction and how to do that. So that's really helpful.

Erin Sharon

And then you can point out individual word meanings too within that sentence. Like, can you find a word that means says, or can you find a word that has an E D ending or a suffix that means it already happened? Like so you can weave those things in at that level too.

Lori

Yeah, I love that. It just really promotes that comprehension at the sentence level that then we know once they can unlock that, then they can go on to comprehend in a much bigger way as they get to the passage level and the full text. So I think it's a great stepping stone and such a fun tool in their toolbox to try tomorrow.

Melissa

All right. So we are so curious, you know, you all have gone through this and seen changes in your school and made intervention better. And I we know there are teachers, there are a lot of teachers out there who are sitting there thinking, like, yeah, it's not quite working that way at my school, and I wish it was. Do you have any advice for them to like where could they even just get started? Because we know it's not just like a thing you can change everything and it'll be great tomorrow. But what's just one place they can get started to get to where you all are now?

Kerry Cusick

I think what was most valuable for me in my school setting was communication about kids first. So kids that we had that conversation before about being lifers and intervention. Why is this happening? Why is this sort of the piece of they've been with me? And yeah, they may exit for a little bit for a cycle, but then they're popping back. Um, just those pieces to really center it there about students and data. I think that's a big piece first. But then also, I think where what got us really far was being open and taking risks and being able to say, yeah, we have to switch things up. Yeah, I was doing small group instruction, you know, classroom teacher me said that I was doing small group, but it was fluff, you know, or things like that. And how can we support those classroom teachers that we worked side by side with for kids to make sure that we have that like sort of peace in mind for the end goal? Um, and also um, I think the more people involved with a mission about the greater good, the power more powerful it is. So for us, it was like I was be sending things to my admin or my other colleagues around the school, you know, like, oh, hey, you want to watch this webinar with me? Hey, you want to buddy up and do this together? Oh, you want to read this book with me? You know, I think those pieces just made our school much more of a community around literacy and readers that made it so much more effective. And that it wasn't meant to be a gotcha at all or oh, you know, that type of a thing. It was more meant to say we're gonna all work together to make this happen in in the sake of children, um, to see where we're all at, um, to make sure that we can have that explicit instruction happening and have that feedback happening of what we're doing in a greater, a greater spance of life and just a greater spance of where we are. We also um were able to have some support of an outside consulting company too to come in. Um, Crafting Minds group worked very much with our school. And we supported um, they supported us from like K to two, um, just in our school, and they made it district wide. So I think that's a piece of we were going to certain workshops and hearing certain people, but then oh, how can we have this be much more all-encompassing, district-wide, to help students? And how can we look at data in a way that's beneficial? I think that was really the biggest piece um uh for our success with this. And it's not overnight. That's another big thing. It took so much time, so, so much time. Um, so teachers, interventionists, everybody, please know that this is years and in progress, you know, and it's still not perfect, you know. It's still a piece that we still want to um, and it may never be perfect, but we're reaching kids in a different way. That's making it more effective for our instruction.

Erin Sharon

Yeah. So where you said like it doesn't happen overnight. I think I I feel like your district is like a couple of years ahead of where mine is, where kind of like like you have some stronger systems in place that I hope that we can have in place in the future. So we do still have a lot of room to grow. I wouldn't say we're necessarily there yet. Um so, but one thing that I think is a shift that anyone can make is I think we need to stop looking at like tier one instruction and intervention as separate things because we're all working together with the same goal of making sure all readers or all students become proficient readers. And we all need to do whatever it takes to get them to that goal. And so it's not who's in this classroom and who's in this classroom, and it's everyone is responsible for every student. And so I think that shift, like whether it's an ad, it's admin, classroom teachers, interventionists, everyone needs to have that mindset of well, what are we gonna do to make sure all of these kids are successful. And I did also want to connect to Carrie pointed out that her district did work with crafting minds, and so did mine. And I think that a lot of what we talk about um comes from that. And so that's been really helpful in getting that on the same page. But I think moving forward, like in my district, it would be helpful if we could get more of that conversation continuing. It was like we we did it, and then we're sort of moved on to something else. And I think it's really important that it's not a we did it and it's done. It's it's always evolving and we we need to stay focused on it.

Lori

Oh, well, we're so glad that you both took some time to share all of this amazing intervention work uh with our listeners. We are so grateful for all the work that you do with your students and thank you for giving us so much detail and explanation so that teachers listening feel empowered as they leave this podcast. So thank you.

Erin Sharon

Thank you for having me.

Stay Connected And Closing

Lori

Yeah, thanks so much.

Melissa

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Lori

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Melissa

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Lori

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