Remarkably Simple Ways to Teach Students to Read

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:05:15
Vicki Davis
Remarkably simple ways to teach students to read, episode 861.

00:00:05:19 – 00:00:09:06
John, Producer
This is the Ten Minute Teacher podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

00:00:09:07 – 00:00:54:18
Vicki Davis
Thank you EVERFI for sponsoring today’s episode. Learn about these free resources that will give your students a head start and will save you valuable planning time. I’ll tell you more at the end of the show, or you can go to everythi.com/coolcat to learn more.

Our guest today is Pam Allen. She’s a leading advocate for children’s literacy and author of many books, including Every Child A Super Reader for episode 757 about how to help struggling readers who are a little bit older, is one of our most popular episodes of all time, so we have brought her back to talk about insights on teaching reading.

00:00:54:18 – 00:01:08:13
Vicki Davis
The goal of this interview that Pam and I have is to equip you with practical strategies to improve your reading instruction methods. So first, Pam, what do you love about teaching reading? Because it is obvious that you love.

00:01:08:13 – 00:01:27:23
Pam Allyn
Teaching, and that’s the best question of all time. My favorite, favorite thing about teaching reading is that any question I’m giving something to that child they’re going to take with them for the rest of their lives. It’s no question to me, no matter what happens in terms of the evolving technologies that we have or anything that comes next.

00:01:27:23 – 00:01:49:03
Pam Allyn
Reading is something that just evolves along a humankinds greatest innovation kind of thing. So I know that no matter what happens, I’m giving them something great. The second thing is I love about it is it’s a way for me to see within that child. It is a way for me to instantly understand and the sort of spirit that they’re bringing with them to the classroom.

00:01:49:05 – 00:02:07:04
Pam Allyn
Some funny aspects of their personalities, the ways they interact with the world, their worries and concerns and fears. Reading with them, reading to them, helping them to manage their own reading experience just brings themselves out into the classroom. And those are the things I most love about teaching reading.

00:02:07:07 – 00:02:29:23
Vicki Davis
Well, if you look at the statistics, the World Literacy Foundation, in a September 2015 report, shared the cost of illiteracy and reported that most people who are illiterate are trapped in poverty. They have limited opportunities for employment, higher chances of poor health, a higher chance of turning to crime, and a higher chance of dependent on social welfare. So this is a strategic issue.

00:02:29:23 – 00:02:52:14
Vicki Davis
And with artificial intelligence, if you look at how it works, we use text to generate text to generate music to generate all these things like literacy, reading literacy and writing. Literacy unlocks everything. So, Pam, you are in the science of reading movement. Could you define the movement for us?

00:02:52:14 – 00:03:21:10
Pam Allyn
Please feel like the word science is powerful for us because we can see that learning to read, learning literacy is actually something cognitively that’s happening to you. So the science of reading movement is really embracing that and saying, let’s look at what’s happening cognitively also psychologically. But a lot of really interesting things happening. So we want to make sure that we touch base on all of those things, whether it’s phonological awareness, phonics itself, fluency, vocabulary comprehension.

00:03:21:11 – 00:03:40:04
Pam Allyn
That’s the kind of overall definition of the science of reading. It’s not one of those things, but it’s how all of those things are interacting with the human brain, especially in the child’s brain as the child is growing. That ring actually needs that literacy food. And the way I see the science of reading movement is we’re feeding children.

00:03:40:04 – 00:04:02:19
Pam Allyn
We’re feeding them all the resources of literacy they need. So yes, they are making that sound to letter correspondence, but also in that scientific look at the human brain, we’re seeing how fluency plays a part, how children are learning to read smoothly, efficiently, quickly, even, and then comprehension. What are they understanding? How is meaning taking root in the child’s understanding of things?

00:04:02:19 – 00:04:36:07
Pam Allyn
Background knowledge is really important, but also foreground knowledge is really important to that idea that we’re going to provide them with new knowledge, that’s going to help them understand and give a context to what they’re reading. So the science of reading movement is one thing, is, yes, about bringing back really good decoding work around phonics. That really muscular work that we’re really attaching sounds to letters to corresponding meaning that those sounds are bringing to us, and the look of those letters on the page or the screen, but also that we’re embedding all that sound letter work in real understanding, real meaning work.

00:04:36:07 – 00:04:59:16
Pam Allyn
I’m excited because the work I’m doing now with my team is in building up a really great opportunity for children to learn phonological and phonemic work that they’re doing embedded in meaning. So it’s not just random sounds and letters, it’s actually let’s really create stories and make stories and read stories that are full and rich with meaning and playful, imaginative universes.

00:04:59:16 – 00:05:24:08
Pam Allyn
I’m writing a series of books right now called Palace Town, and those books are a science of reading oriented. But what I’m trying to do and to say to teachers is, let’s actually give children meaning. These stories, we don’t need to throw meaning out with phonics. Phonics should go alongside meaning, and I think that’s really the intention of the science of reading movement is to make it a joyful world for children, of which they have every tool they need.

00:05:24:09 – 00:05:43:18
Vicki Davis
How do you respond to the critics of the Science of reading movement? I mean, there’s some information out there. I’m sure you’ve read it to say that this movement could lead to an overreliance on scripted programs and computer based instruction instead of the talented, skilled teachers who are so good at teaching reading. Do you feel like that has merit?

00:05:43:20 – 00:06:13:06
Pam Allyn
I would be devastated if that were to happen. I think more than ever before. We need two things. We need great teachers who really know what they’re doing and are highly skilled and trained as teachers of reading and writing. I think that professional development is more important than ever before, not just a rote professional development, really. Having teachers do inquiry around this work and become confident in terms of what the aspects of the science of reading at work is.

00:06:13:09 – 00:06:36:20
Pam Allyn
But then the second thing is, I think that, you know, children more than ever, we saw this during the Covid era. They were on screens way too much. We saw that when they came back into school. They there are lots of rising incidences of of anxiety and school phobia and children not showing up at school. The sheer importance of relationship building that teachers do is it’s just profound.

00:06:36:20 – 00:07:00:23
Pam Allyn
And I think especially around literacy, I think that the idea that we’re going to lose read aloud or we’re going to lose that opportunity for a teacher to sit side by side with a child and to be the first to introduce them to the magic of unlocking text. And what that means when you first realize that a page of words in the screen of words has meaning, and you’re doing that alongside a caring, mentoring adult, we cannot lose that.

00:07:00:23 – 00:07:22:14
Pam Allyn
That’s so important not to lose that. You spoke about some of the statistics. My most concerning statistic right now is the rising rate of chronic absenteeism across the country, across all socioeconomic groups. I think that’s because we have to recommit to children that we’re not just about screens in school. Otherwise children think they go to school and they’re they could do that at home.

00:07:22:14 – 00:07:45:00
Pam Allyn
Why do they need to go to school? Why they come to school. They love their teacher. They love their friends. They want to be in a social environment around learning to read and write. There’s a great story. I read yesterday about a teacher who had promised his students that if he were still around 50 years from now, he wanted them to come back and and be part of the solar eclipse with them.

00:07:45:00 – 00:08:07:09
Pam Allyn
So he put out a call. All these years later, you’ve long retired, and his students all came back for that solar eclipse, and with him in person, in person, they came back over a hundred of them. But that that is a great example of why the human interaction with literacy, a human, the human soul of of literacy is absolutely vital in this technology era.

00:08:07:09 – 00:08:14:15
Pam Allyn
And we cannot ever believe that screens are going to replace that relational work that we do with our students.

00:08:14:17 – 00:08:43:09
Vicki Davis
And as someone who was taught phonics back, and I’m dating myself back in the 70s, our curriculum was heavily phonics. I love reading. I read a book a week now, still. I would, rather than anything else. I have my memories of Miss Temples helping us sound out all of the letters and all of the attention she gave me as an individual human being, and snuggling up with mom and dad and reading those books.

00:08:43:09 – 00:08:53:00
Vicki Davis
And I can’t imagine it’s so personal that teachers would be more needed than ever. Great teachers, are really something that can’t be replaced.

00:08:53:01 – 00:09:11:14
Pam Allyn
I love that you said that. Whether we’re stretching the sounds of words on a or we’re just admiring the beauty of an elegant sentence, everybody who remembers something about literacy in their childhood remembers doing it with somebody. And then you can go on and be independent. But what you’re saying is very profound.

00:09:11:16 – 00:09:31:08
Vicki Davis
Well, and falling in love with language, you know, when you see a sentence and you just like, oh, you know, I want my students to have that, even though I teach computers, science, beautiful words are are majestic and they make the world a better place. So we could talk about this forever, but we need to talk about the common mistakes schools make when teaching reading.

00:09:31:08 – 00:09:45:03
Vicki Davis
So I want you to think back, and I want you to tell me about the day that you realized some mistakes were being made when teaching reading to scribe that moment, and what were the mistakes that you observed?

00:09:45:05 – 00:10:06:07
Pam Allyn
Well, I think maybe, you know, one of the most common mistakes, which, I hope everyone will take into account, right, in these changing times, if there is no such thing as the teaching of reading, that’s just about phonics. That’s just about comprehension. It’s actually both of those things that have to go hand in hand, I think, where we make the mistake.

00:10:06:07 – 00:10:26:02
Pam Allyn
But when we’re looking at out into that sea of our students and we say all of them today need this help on this, just this one thing, if I can just do this one thing today, all will be well. And I realized this too. In my first year, I was teaching deaf students in Brooklyn at Saint Francis Israel School for the deaf, still an amazing school.

00:10:26:02 – 00:10:43:06
Pam Allyn
And I looked out to my students and I thought, I’m going to do it all this way. And then, you know, they taught me differently that they each need something different. And there are some best practices. I’m going to teach them the best practices of the teaching of reading. But each and every day I’ve got to sit down with each of them one at a time.

00:10:43:11 – 00:11:05:03
Pam Allyn
I’ve got to be able to see each of them as their own self, as their own independent reader. So I think it’s both not seeing reading as one narrow path and also seeing our students as not one vast group, but they are each so individual, and something is going to ignite their love for reading by us, sitting beside them and saying, what’s something you’re passionate about?

00:11:05:03 – 00:11:26:00
Pam Allyn
A little grandson right now he’s really into dinosaurs, so we’re just taking out every single book at the library on dinosaurs. There is. But I need to be vigilant because in another few months you might develop some other new interests. And I think that’s what we need to do as teachers, too. I think we we make the mistake sometimes of thinking one size fits all, and that’s never, ever going to be fully the case.

00:11:26:00 – 00:11:43:10
Pam Allyn
I think there are some best practices we can teach our students how to use phonics to drive their understanding and, turn that key into the world of reading can help them use comprehension. It can help them use fluency. How to read smoothly. But at the end of the day, I think we want to know who they are to.

00:11:43:10 – 00:12:06:10
Pam Allyn
And then there’s one last thing I’ll say about mistakes we make. And that is when we see reading instruction as only reading as breathing in, we only have want them to take in what we’re giving them. There’s also writing. Writing is part of that too. I’m a big fan of the teaching of writing. In my new program, Palestine, I’m talking a lot about the teaching of writing because students become very passive if all they’re doing is reading.

00:12:06:12 – 00:12:25:12
Pam Allyn
The other component of literacy is writing. So to ask and invite teachers to wonder, where does writing fit in to my reading program? That’s a big mistake. I think we have all made in the past is to ignore writing, or to marginalize it, or to put it to the side. But reading is breathing in. Writing is breathing out.

00:12:25:14 – 00:12:38:20
Vicki Davis
Love it. And they’re so interrelated. Let’s talk practical idea is and you’ve already given some very practical things, but what can teachers do right now in their classrooms relating to the teaching of instruction, looking.

00:12:38:20 – 00:13:09:10
Pam Allyn
At phonological, phonemic, and phonics in that kind of context is to remember to be joyful and playful with that, because we do get a little over done with the kind of, you know, procedural work of the teaching of reading. But all of that is such fun work. It’s very sound based. It’s playful and joyful at its essence. So remembering that singing, game playing, the work of stretching sounds to make meaning on the page.

00:13:09:10 – 00:13:38:17
Pam Allyn
Children love doing those things. They love rhyming. They love singing, they love chanting, they love writing and drawing. And all of that is phonics work. I’m talking about older students to older, struggling students that you and I have talked about these students before. They can’t miss that. So if they’re if you’re a middle school teacher listening today, please be playful and joyful with the work of phonics instruction because it is really playful and joyful.

00:13:38:17 – 00:13:58:23
Pam Allyn
So that’s that’s one. The second thing is when we talk about fluency and that idea of reading smoothly and reading quickly, don’t be afraid to actually talk about those things with your students. I do talk with my students about speed reading. There’s nothing wrong with actually being a little competitive about that, and actually having an opportunity for your students to see that.

00:13:59:03 – 00:14:25:14
Pam Allyn
Just like practicing sports, you know, you you we go out and we for playing soccer basketball. We want to be speedy. We want to be fast. So that too, I think we’re talking about fluency is giving students text to practice with, in which they can practice reading steadily with expression is actually really fun. And that’s another thing. Another piece of advice that I would give around vocabulary, which is a big part of the science of reading, is how we absorb vocab.

00:14:25:14 – 00:15:00:02
Pam Allyn
Woolery is for teachers to use authentic text to actually call out words that students are observing and seeing in the magic of writers who know what they’re doing, whether it’s E.B. White or Langston Hughes or or Sharon Creech or or just any Carmen Audra Didi, these writers are amazing, amazing. They’re like vocabulary geniuses. So really call out those words, have students keep index cards by their side and say, you know, when you’re in your independent reading today and you come upon a word that’s just magnificent to you, you might not even know what it means yet.

00:15:00:03 – 00:15:21:04
Pam Allyn
Let’s hang those up. Or let’s keep Google drives of those amazing words. But again, making vocabulary, not just something that they have to memorize and practice, but also that they see in their own authentic, independent reading. And then finally, this is the heart of the science of reading. Pedagogy is phonemic awareness. Phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and then finally comprehension.

00:15:21:10 – 00:15:42:02
Pam Allyn
A tip that I have for comprehension is when we’re really looking at to think about what we understand as readers, there’s I would invite teachers to put back curiosity into your comprehension work, because if everything is just us telling students what they ought to comprehend, that does, by the way, get very boring after a while for our students.

00:15:42:07 – 00:15:43:22
Pam Allyn
So bring back curiosity.

00:15:43:22 – 00:16:06:05
Vicki Davis
Well, readers are leaders, and leaders are readers, and it’s an essential part of of excellence and being successful in the world. Follow Pam Allen. She is author, founder of Dewy Lit Life and Lit World. She has many, many books and is such a great resource to help all of us help all of our students home. Better readers, thanks for coming on the show, Pam.

00:16:06:10 – 00:16:38:10
Vicki Davis
Do you want to equip your students for success in their careers and person lives, but you just don’t know where to start? I’m going to tell you today about an awesome free opportunity. You have to do just that for all grades K through 12. Everybody has your go to solution. It aligns with state standards in his earn the prestigious Estee Seal ever devised digital lessons are crafted to empower your students to excel in our dynamic world.

00:16:38:10 – 00:17:15:15
Vicki Davis
The lessons are interactive, self-paced, and designed by content experts. They have courses such as Financial Literacy, Workforce readiness, character building, mental Health and Prevention education for all grade levels. And thanks to everybody’s generous partners, these research based resources come at no cost to all K-12 schools, districts and students. So visit phi.com/cool cat. That’s ev e rfi.com/cool cat. And get started today on these amazing lessons for free.

00:17:15:17 – 00:17:28:04
John, Producer
You’ve been listening to the ten Minute Teacher podcast. If you want more content from Vicki Davis, you can find her on Facebook, X-Com TikTok threads, Instagram Blue Sky and YouTube at coolcat. Teacher, thank you for listening.