The Power of Effective Reading Instruction with Karen Gazith
Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in, everybody. You are listening to the Authority Podcast here on the BE Podcast Network. Thanks, as always, for joining us. We're pleased to have you here for another episode that is part of our National Literacy Month Campaign, a partnership we're doing here at the BE Podcast Network with Reading is Fundamental, in which we're hosting a number of productive conversations across our network of podcasts.
about developing kids reading and literacy skills for life. We're looking at it with researchers, practitioners, authors, parents, and many more, and really dissecting all the different things that we can think about in instilling a joy of reading, reading engagement, building the foundational skills for reading, writing, and other forms of literacy.
And I have a great guest today to discuss it. My guest is [00:01:00] Karen Gazith. Karen received her PhD in Education and Counseling Psychology from McGill University, and she has taught at McGill for over two decades. She also serves as the Graduate Program Director of Certificate in Inclusive Education in the same department, and as a liaison to the Office of First Nations and Inuit Education in the Department of Integrated Studies and Education at McGill.
She has a book called The Power of Effective Reading Instruction, How Neuroscience Informs Education. instruction across all grades and disciplines. We're going to be talking all about that today. Karen, welcome to the show.
Karen Gazith: Thank you. And I should mention my first book that I'm also proud of, which is The Power of Effective Instruction.
Ross Romano: Excellent. Yeah, and I'm sure there's a lot of relationship between them and and it's you know, there, there's, That's something we haven't, we've talked about science of reading, we've certainly talked about joy of reading, reading engagement, making a book successful, but the neuroscience [00:02:00] aspect is something we haven't talked about yet.
So let's start there since that's unique to your background. What does the neuroscience research say about how children learn to read?
Karen Gazith: so we'll make it brief because, you know, probably go on for a very long time, but there's a couple of key things that I think teachers and parents need to know. One is, there aren't multiple highways for kids to learn how to read. You know, there's this belief that you can learn using whole language balance literacy or, you know, focusing on phonics.
There really is one pathway to reading. Kids, you know, must have a strong phonemic background and develop phonics. They have to learn how to map the letter to the sound. If they do, then they could fully enjoy reading. the pleasures of reading. So the pathway of, again, first they have to be [00:03:00] able to break a word into its sounds, then they have to be able to map the sounds onto the letters.
There's a particular part of the brain responsible for that. It's the parietal temporal lobe of the left hemisphere. That's the part of the brain that enables us to break those sounds apart and then eventually map them. Reading is not natural from an evolutionary perspective. It's relatively new. We say about 5, 000 years old.
So that's new in evolutionary terms. And for that reason there is no part of the brain specifically tasked with reading. So the brain has had to sort of borrow, we say, you know, do what's called neuro recycling, or borrow parts of the brain that are targeted or primed for language. So language is natural, you just have to expose a child to a language and they will speak, but reading, for the reasons I mentioned, is not natural.
And therefore, Kids must learn how to read, again, break words [00:04:00] into their parts and eventually map them onto the sounds. And kids with effective reading instruction will learn how to read. Some kids will struggle more than others. We have to make sure that we identify those who are at risk and support them very early on.
Again, because reading is not natural, it must be taught and it must be learned.
Ross Romano: Yeah, and you write in the book that teaching students to read is the most essential duty of schools. And also that reading is everyone's business in the school, that it's not just the domain of the literacy teacher. Can you talk a little more about that, about, you know, why reading is so foundational to make it the, you know, the number one priority and, and why everybody in the school needs to be involved?
Karen Gazith: It's funny, I was, I was going to name the book No Teacher is Off the Hook, and then we decided that maybe that wasn't the best [00:05:00] title, but at the end of the day, No Teacher is Off the Hook. So, you know, starting from when the child is born, basically, where they're developing that ability to recognize language and how language is broken into parts, and then when they move into sort of, you know, early nursery, kindergarten, grade one and grade two, they're learning how to read.
Reading instruction in almost all school environments ends by the end of grade two, maybe by the end of grade three. So, kids are actually learning how to read, that mapping, and then from basically grade three on, They have to read to learn. They require the ability to read in order to glean information in all areas.
It's almost like the gateway, the door that opens so that they could fully enjoy the ability to either glean information, read for pleasure, but they depend on that early reading. Now that doesn't [00:06:00] only apply to a language class, right? No matter what class they're in, whether it's math or history or science, They're presented with text that they need to be able to make sense of, so they have to decode it initially, but obviously comprehension is the ultimate in reading so they need to be able to do that decoding in order to be able to fully glean information and, and like I said, read for pleasure.
And it doesn't end at the end of, of high school, right? I mean, we, we live in a literate world. In order to fully benefit and profit from the world around us, we need to be able to read, we need to be able to fill out job applications, read information, read books. books that are of interest to us, whether it's a hard copy or a digital text.
So we, we live in a literate world, so in school to thrive academically but also post school. And, you know, there are unfortunately really negative consequences for [00:07:00] kids who don't develop that early skill of, of reading. (ad here)
Ross Romano: Right. Yeah, and then you can think about across subject areas how it would be, in most cases, impossible for a student to demonstrate what they know in a particular area without reading and writing ability,
Karen Gazith: And then you said writing is also our ability to communicate what we know to people who are not directly in front of us. So not only do I have to read, but then I have to write, so I have to encode the words, I have to map those sounds onto the letters, so that I can communicate with people who are not directly in front of me.
And that's critically important, because in the world that we live in, in the world that we're going into we're not going to be working in offices. In many cases you know, with people directly in front of us where we can go to them and tell them what we have to say, a lot of it is going to be through other forms of written [00:08:00] communication. So, you know, the art of writing and reading is essential for students and for post, you know, post high school university life.
Ross Romano: Yeah, so to bring about a system of schooling in which every teacher is prepared and equipped to be on the hook for, for doing their part with respect to reading instruction what changes, should be happening from the current, you know, status quo in pre service teacher education and, and then, you know, in, in service learning,
Karen Gazith: Great question. So, as I teach a graduate course at McGill University in reading, and we talk about the big five of reading, that has to be essential in all undergraduate classes, education classes, or anyone who is going to be working in the field of education, teaching kids how to read. There needs to be that essential course in how kids learn how to read, how to [00:09:00] teach kids how to read, how to identify kids who are at risk.
So that has to be an absolute essential course for all students. Teachers as a, as a, you know, an undergraduate course shouldn't be able to graduate with a bachelor's degree in education without a course on how to teach kids how to read within a school environment. I'm a huge proponent of huge believer in the impact of effective leadership.
So, you know, wonderful schools have wonderful leaders, and the leaders really set the vision for the school. So a leader that sees literacy as, you know, the optimum, the, you know, ultimate importance, a critical skill for all students to master, really sends that message to everybody in the school. It's not the responsibility of the kindergarten grade one, grade two teacher.
It's everybody's responsibility that becomes sort of part of the vision and mission of the school. And therefore [00:10:00] resources are devoted to that. two that, you know, making sure that all teachers feel comfortable. And again, we're not talking about, you know, K 2 teachers. We're talking about all teachers, all grades recognizing the importance of literacy and the role that they have to play, whether it's a, you know, a third grade teacher or a 12th grade teacher, their role in making sure that kids, so the leadership making sure that it's a priority and therefore resources.
School to make sure that we're up on the literature, that everybody is aware of the evidence the, you know, plethora of research on how kids learn how to read.
Ross Romano: you know, is it what's most typical now? Is there just not universal pre service learning on reading instruction? Is there a lot of the focus that's on [00:11:00] alternative practices, right, that aren't really based in the evidence. What what's the happening most typically.
Karen Gazith: So, you know, it depends. It depends on the university, it depends on the school. I don't think there's sort of one hard and fast rule. Some universities have very solid courses on how to teach kids how to read. I would say if you're interested in a degree in education. Do your research and make sure that the university that you're going to.
So, again, it depends. Some, some do, some don't. And the same thing with schools. Some schools have, you know, focused really significantly on making sure that they focus, that they teach teachers how to write. how to teach reading, that they do a lot of professional development on evidence based practice. It depends.
It really depends on the school. In some schools, they still are of the belief that there are [00:12:00] different ways to teach kids how to read, They're sort of stuck in older, in, in past decades, where there were, you know, different beliefs. One of the things that I worry about is people have philosophies about education.
And based on those philosophies, they sort of allow teachers, and teachers should be, you know, should be able to demonstrate the, you know, the, the art of teaching. I say teaching is both an art and a science. So all teachers should bring their, their character, their personality into teaching. But there is, there's a science to teaching reading, just like there's a science to teaching anything, right?
And, you know, we have to make sure that we don't get stuck on a philosophy because it's something that we believe, and therefore we teach everything according to that philosophy, versus the philosophy should be the research. What does the research say about how kids learn how to read? There is so much great research out there.
Let's use the research and let's make sure that based on that research we're, we're teaching our [00:13:00] teachers, we're, we're giving teachers the opportunity to learn without, you know, without that pressure of you got to get it right, right away. So allowing teachers to take risks, to try out new evidence based practices, to get the support that they need.
And all throughout the process to make sure that that vision is front and center, you know, we believe one of my favorite sayings is great leaders with that where their vision like clothing. So if your vision is the importance of literacy, you walk into the school, you see it everywhere you see it and you see it on the walls, you see it in the classrooms, and you allow teachers the opportunity to learn most effectively how to teach kids how to read.
Ross Romano: Yeah. And I imagine to, that it's always worth some ongoing professional learning and reinforcement and, and of course to maintain consistency to make sure that every [00:14:00] new teacher that comes into the building in a given year is receiving the same learning.
Karen Gazith: I'll just add one other thing to that, you know, if you have to make sure in a school environment, you know, that we use only research based practice, that's critical. So, you know, in some schools, there's a belief in old models of literacy, like balanced literacy. And, you know, we may get into that, you know, in the questions, but it's, you know, it's important that we, you know, that we base our instruction on the research and not, you know, I think that this is the best way to teach kids how to read because, you know, it's a belief system that I have.
So we have to move away from models of, of teaching reading that are just not founded in the research, not based on the research.
Ross Romano: Yeah, and I'm sure there's multiple explanations, but it does make me wonder what are the reasons why paths diverge, why you know, [00:15:00] why evidence based practices that have existed for a long time, that are proven to work, you know, kind of come in and out and different ideas take hold. And, and I imagine that sometimes at least there might be the appearance that a different way works because, you know, some kids just have an easier time learning to read than others.
So it may not be anything that the teacher did that worked. It's just that, that those kids learned how to read. But in, in other cases, you know, Education, most people would say it's immune to too much progress and innovation. And yet, I still think in most areas of society, there's the assumption that our knowledge base is always expanding and that we should know a different way now than we used to know.
And sometimes that just means that we have [00:16:00] reinforcement that the other way works, or there could be other things that. change just contextually and culturally and, and a learner in a classroom in the 2020s has a different environmental experience than a child in the 1950s, but their brain may still learn reading the same way.
And so there could be other things that a teacher does differently, but that doesn't mean the instructional practice has changed. But I wonder, you know, if you have thoughts on. why there's inconsistency in sticking to a practice that is proven to work.
Karen Gazith: So a whole bunch of different reasons, right? But just to identify some, I think, so I'm Canadian, I'm not American, but I think that there are some political challenges. I think a lot of it has to do with where it came from. You know, there was the President's Council in the early, you know, in the [00:17:00] early 2000s, where, you know, researchers, educators combed through the research to identify best practices.
How do kids learn how to read? And I came up with the, with the Big Five. In addition, again, if you look at the research today, the research still maintains that here are the Big Five of reading. That hasn't changed, but I do think that there's some political elements. to it, you know, where it came from, who promulgated the desire to look at the research.
So I think there is some of that. I also think, probably a more significant reason, and I think this relates to a lot of the challenges we have in education. We forget that kids are 6, 7, and they're not us. They don't have our adult brain, so what I mean by that is, I think one of the reasons we got into trouble with different approaches to reading is we thought that kids brains were like [00:18:00] us, right, we thought that they're, because reading, decoding as an example is for sure boring for an adult.
Adults know how to read. So I think we sort of imposed our own beliefs as an adult. We forgot what it was like to be six learning how to read. And we're saying, well, I'm an adult. I love to read. How could we break it down to sounds and letters? That's just so boring for kids. So we sort of imposed our adult love of literacy on the brain, the mind of a six year old.
And we said, well, they must be bored. Of course, they're not bored. They're six years old. This is completely new for them. So, you know, that, that was one sort of pathway to ineffective practices, you know, by saying things like, well, just going to, you know, we're going to expose them to great text. Of course, we need to expose them to great text that goes without saying, but in order for them to read, they need to map letters to sounds.
And there's, there's no [00:19:00] escaping that. So part of it, and I think that applies to other areas of education also, there's a great concept called the expert blind spot, which is the better you are at something, the more difficult it is to teach it to somebody who is new to the learning, because you make the assumption that other people know what you know.
Right? And and that's a faulty assumption. So, you know, we, we, we need to think like the six year old, the 12 year old, the 14 year old, and not assume that they see, whether it be reading or the math example, the way that we do. So I think that's a reason why, in many cases, we deem these things boring.
They may, you know, the elements learning how to do something may be boring for us, but it is the essential building blocks. to, to learning.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting that you say that because I, in a, another episode I recorded that actually I believe is going to publish a couple of weeks after this one, but with Noreen Bunt, [00:20:00] also about the science of reading that was a question that I asked was, you know, This sounds Basically, like, these fundamentals are boring, and is that part of the reason why teachers are looking for other ways to do it, because it's more interesting to teach, you know, a variety of texts and things and get away from the fundamentals that students, you know, can't keep up with.
And, to your point, Reading in particular being such a foundational skill, but something that I, I don't remember how I learned how to read, right? I was too young at that time to, to have those permanent memories, like things that you learned later on that you might remember better. And so for teachers And especially those early year teachers, that's why people who know how to teach children or, you know, are a special breed, because you have to be able to persevere through that, stick with the [00:21:00] fundamentals, be persistent, and also relate to the mind of that learner and understand that this is Thanks.
a challenge for them. It might seem super simple and it might be frustrating because these things are, you know, to our minds we, we basically have no direct way at this point of comprehending why this is something that takes a while to pick up. And yet, if we rush past it or think that there's another way, and also.
You know, the same thing with that certain kids just pick up reading, right? And, you know, and so it can be misleading based on that to think, well, whatever worked over there works over here. And the reality is that for All subject areas, and for all kinds of fields and domains and [00:22:00] paths of expertise, there's certain people who just pick them up, and it's not really about who taught them or how they taught them, people, people just have aptitudes, but that doesn't apply to most of the population.
And so it really,
Karen Gazith: Yeah, but I would say everybody needs to learn how to read, even those who, you know, have an easier time at it, they've learned how to map letters onto sounds. But I also think that, you know, two important things to mention. One is that reading, doesn't end, you know, with it, like I said, at the end of grade two, but the high school teacher is also a reading teacher.
So I have to make sure that, you know, kids in my math class know how to comprehend the math problem. Kids in my science class know how to make sense of expository text so they can read it and understand it and history text, etc. So that's, you know, one, one important reading. It doesn't end, and that's why, you know, every teacher is a reading [00:23:00] teacher.
The other reason why I think it's difficult is because, and why teachers may lean in another direction, is it's really hard to be standing in front of a group of students and being asked to do something that you never learned how to do. So, you know, we ask teachers to, if we're saying, listen, you've got to teach the basics of reading, phonemic awareness, phonics, but if you've never learned how to do that, but here you are in front of a group of, you know, seven year olds, that, that's tough.
That's not an easy thing to do. I need to believe in my capacity to teach kids how to read, which means I need how to learn how to teach kids how to read. So, we've got to, we've got to invest in that.
Ross Romano: Yeah. I mean, I've noticed that myself in, in professional learning with certain things where, when I know that I'm going to have to. explain to somebody else how to do it. If it's something I know how to do, but I just learned how to do it through experience, that I have to go and read some resources and say, all right, what's a, [00:24:00] you know, what's a four step model for describing this to somebody else so that they know that I know and that they can pick up on it.
because I just know how to do it, but I, you know, I might not know the jargon or the terminology that would make it sound like, Oh yeah, this, this guy really knows. But it totally relates. And it also makes the case for why there needs to be universal pre service and then hopefully in service teacher learning on this, because I think, I mean, I, I, it's not in every school, but in a lot of cases.
that there's too much pressure put on reading instruction too early for a lot of kids, kids as young as three and four, that because I just believe that if a kid by the time they're in kindergarten already develops the self conception that they're not as smart as their [00:25:00] peers or not as capable, I think that sticks with them.
But at the same time, you know, if we have Teachers who are in the middle school and high school grades who have never learned anything about teaching reading. And they have kids who are struggling to read in their classes. And it's just like, okay, if these kids haven't learned to read by now, they're basically just going to struggle in school forever because now nobody knows how to teach it anymore.
And you know, and I do have clear memories of being in eighth grade social studies class and having a, you know, a, a kid. did their turn to read a page in class and they couldn't read it and it was just like the whole class just stopped and you know,
Karen Gazith: And by the way, it was traumatic for those kids.
Ross Romano: right. And what was that kid feeling? And now what was that kid getting out of the class?
And, but it wasn't like, I doubt it really probably led to anything, you know, I don't, I don't [00:26:00] know. I mean, but I, I don't know that there was a infrastructure in place to say, okay, well, these kids obviously are unable to participate fully in this class because if they can't read the textbook, they can't do the homework, they can't do the read alouds, it's not, and, but if that teacher was trained and, you know, always taught at those grade levels and potentially never received any learning in this because it wasn't assumed to be part of their you know, area of coverage, then it's not, Because we do know that based on the data, at least at this point, you know, at least until we get to the theoretical future where 100 percent of kids are proficient at reading by a certain level it just creates a system whereby some of them are just destined to fail if, if nobody's,
Karen Gazith: how to read really at any point. [00:27:00] You know, you bring up so many different points, important points. One is, you know, like I said, you can teach a student to read at any age. However, we need to do early assessments, which doesn't mean labeling kids. We, so let me take a step back. The first thing that you mentioned is when kids learn how to read.
So there is a trajectory. It's not as if kids, you know, well, you're not reading grade one, we'll wait till grade two. That's very problematic. What we need to do is make sure in the early, early years, from the moment they're born, basically, they're exposed to lots of great books and language and people are, you know, talking with them and to them and, you know, They're exposed, they have great exposure to language and to books, but books in terms of this is a fun, beautiful thing for us to be doing you know, when they're in preschool, nursery school, we need to be working on the skills like.
Rhyming, so they don't know that we're teaching them, right? It's fun, [00:28:00] but we're reading them loads of rhyming books, and we're working on breaking words into their parts in the most fun way, but it is a critical pre skill, and that's the skill of phonological awareness. by the time they get into kindergarten, we need, again, we need to know what benchmarks they need to be hitting at different points.
When they're in kindergarten, again, they, we need to be, you know, they need to be able to break words into their sounds. And then by the end of the year, know the, you know, the names of the letters to a certain extent. And in grade one, really focus on the mapping, the letters, the sounds. And, you know, we, we, we move up in that way.
And of course, comprehension, vocabulary, critical all, all the way through. So there is a trajectory that I think. Teachers need to be aware of and we should be, when I say assessment, I don't mean psycho educational assessments, I don't mean IQ tests, I mean just reading assessments that are quick and indicate to us whether or not kids are hitting their benchmark.
You know, so that's, that's one important piece [00:29:00] when kids are in, like you said, eighth grade is an example, right? First of all, I, I just, I hope, and I know the practice was getting kids to read out loud. I hope teachers no longer do that. First of all, I don't know what the value is. Kids who are great readers are great readers.
Kids who are poor readers, it's just absolutely traumatic to have to read out loud. I think kids should be reading all the time, but we have to find better ways of doing that. And there are loads of great skills that I speak about in my book about how to teach the big five and how to teach skills about each one.
But what I do think, if you're an eighth grade teacher, And you could fully benefit from the class if you're struggling to read. There are lots of ways that we can accommodate to your needs. We put the book on text, but that doesn't mean that you're learning how to read. So we have to accommodate while you're in the class, but the eighth grade teacher should, you know, yelling from the rooftop.
Somebody has to help this kid learn how to read. And I don't mean to say that the science teacher has to become the reading teacher. [00:30:00] I don't even mean to say that the eighth grade English language arts teacher has to go back to decoding. You know, we, we have to all be able to advocate for those kids and say, you know, somebody has to go back to the basics with this kid and teach them how to decode.
Because there are kids in eighth grade and ninth grade, there's a handful of them. that are, you know, not proficiently decoding text.
Ross Romano: right. Because if you are the science teacher in that case and you give a test, what, you know, what grade can you honestly give the kid other than incomplete, right?
Karen Gazith: Well, there's different things. You could, for sure. But you, you know, you could provide accommodations. So you could put the, you could, you know, provide automated text for that test. So the child is hearing the questions being read out to them. So that would be considered an accommodation, which is totally fine and necessary.
So the child [00:31:00] is not disadvantaged, right? They probably have great knowledge, you could imagine, in the content, they just can't access the text. So we provide accommodations, but at the same time we have to teach that child how to read.
Ross Romano: right. Excellent. So, so let's go to the big five that you referenced. And for listeners who either aren't familiar with this phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension. When we look at the percentage of students who struggle to read, are there particular you know, areas of these big five that are, it's more heavily weighted toward or not so much.
Karen Gazith: Well, most of them are building blocks that build on the other, not all of them. For example, vocabulary you start from the moment you're born, whereas phonics depends on phonemic awareness. Fluency depends on proficiency with phonics. So if you [00:32:00] struggle early on with phonemic awareness, it is going to have an impact on your ability to decode and read fluently.
Comprehension is an important one because In order to understand what you're reading when you read it, I have to be a fluent reader. So what happens after I've mastered decoding, I, hopefully with good teacher support, I become a fluent reader. Which means I'm no longer decoding. Which means that if you look at a word, you cannot not read it, because it's moved to a different part of the brain.
That will only happen after you've mastered decoding. So, one really depends on the other, and that's why every teacher depends on every other teacher to do their work effectively so that you can do your work effectively, right? These things really are, are building blocks. (ad here)
Ross Romano: And so, of course there's instructional strategies that, that relate to [00:33:00] each of these five and there's many of them. So, you know, we will get to all of those today, but maybe it's worth, you know, highlighting one or two that are really compelling or ones that are either really key or, or that more teachers should be using just to start to give an idea of, okay, here's some of the strategies to be aware of.
Here's some that you may have done before and not necessarily realized it was, you know, based in the science here, or others that you may not have tried, or you may have heard somebody say, don't do that. That it's, you know, worth kind of giving that context. And that also lets, listeners know more of what they can dive into in the book as well.
So, you know, maybe we can go one, one at a time, phonemic awareness as the first to just kind of, you know, what's, what's a strategy or two that really address that.
Karen Gazith: So, phonemic awareness is the ability to break words into their Phonemes, a phoneme is a [00:34:00] sound, an isolated sound, so phonemic awareness is essential because in order to map letters onto sounds, you have to hear the word and recognize that in a word, a word is made of individual sounds, so that later on, I can map the letter to the sound, so one strategy, you know, Elkhann in boxes is a great strategy, I talk about it in the book, where we present words to kids.
And we give them these boxes and we, you know, you can give them a poker chip or a car and you're constantly working on, you know, put a car for each square. That represents a sound that you hear, and keep in mind phonemic awareness is done basically as if with your eyes closed, because you're not reading the word, you're hearing it.
So we give students, you know, CBC, consonant vowel consonant words, we give them these squares, and we say, I want you to put down a car for each individual sound that you hear. Another very good strategy, [00:35:00] again this is all about breaking words into their parts, another good strategy is we give, you know, you could clap out three different sounds.
So I could clap, snap, bang, and then I say to the student, how many sounds did you hear, and they're going to tell me three. I heard a clap, a bang, and a snap. And then I map a phoneme onto those sounds. So, you know, it becomes d, o, g. So what I'm doing is I'm helping them break the word into sounds. They recognize what an isolated sound is, and I want them to be able to break that word into these isolated sounds.
So those are two strategies that work very effectively. But we need to do them on a consistent basis. I mean, almost to the point where a child says, you know, I want to go to the bathroom, and you're saying, okay, how many words, how many sounds do you hear in? You know, I want to take a drink. Great. We're constantly immersing them in that ability to break words into their isolated sounds.
Ross Romano: yeah. How [00:36:00] about phonics,
Karen Gazith: Phonics. So phonics is the mapping of a letter or a grapheme, because You know, TH represents one isolated sound, which we call a grapheme. So, the strategy that I think, one thing that we really, really need to do away with is asking kids to look at the picture to identify the word. So, if they're trying to decode the word dog, so again, we're mapping the letter to the sound and now we're asking them to decode.
If we show them a picture of a dog. And they're struggling to decode the word and we say to them, look at the picture. We are asking them to do the exact opposite of what they should be doing. We're encouraging them to guess. And we don't want them to guess. It's called decoding for a reason. It's a code.
So a strategy that works really well is something like Jolly Phonics or Itchy's Alphabet. where in Itchy's Alphabet, every letter is represented with a visual picture. So there's a forest for the F, [00:37:00] there's an apple for the A, and it's built into the letter. You sort of have to see Itchy's Alphabet, but for kids who, for all kids, because Itchy's Alphabet is great for everybody, but for kids who have particular difficulty remembering the sounds of the letters, you show them the image.
So they see the letter A, they remember that A is sort of built into the apple. So I, you know, I have a picture of an apple, but I, you know, I build it into something that looks like an A. So when they see an A, what comes to mind is an apple that brings them to an ah sound. A mountain that's in the form of an M.
They see the M, they remember the mountain and brings them to the sound. Mm. And there's also a sequence that I talk about in the book, the most effective sequence to teach you know, one letter at a time.
Ross Romano: Yeah.
Karen Gazith: So that's phonics.
Ross Romano: Excellent. Yeah. Phonics. I, that is one. I mean, not, not as an educator myself, but that I, I, [00:38:00] I think I've kind of observed and tracked the the ups and downs of, of fidelity to teaching phonics and practices and, and remembering when it was a standard part of reading instruction. And then when schools stopped doing it, and, you know, it's As you described, right, really an important thing to master and and, but for whatever reason Not everybody's stuck with it.
And, uh, how about vocabulary? Vocabulary, I'm guessing schools do teach, but maybe you don't teach it well enough, or as I was thinking about in a recent conversation, stop teaching it. You know, elementary level when, when it's something we could all continue to keep building on, you
Karen Gazith: yes, you know, we, of course, teach vocabulary. I think the problem is that we don't teach it explicitly enough. So, there are three tiers of vocabulary. Tier one is sort of [00:39:00] everyday language that you pick up through conversation, you know, watching TV. Tier two is academic words. but words that you that you would learn through, not specific to a, to a discipline, but common academic language, like words, you know, words like increase, decrease, cause of, you know, not necessarily connected to a discipline.
And then tier three are very disciplined specific words like mitosis. And we have to explicitly teach, we should focus on those tier two and those tier three words, but very, very explicitly. So, you know, we should be teaching a word a day, literally, specifically, you know, going to what words kids need to know.
There's lots, you can go on Flowcabulary. It's a great site. It has, well, here are the third grade words. And, you know, very, very specifically, images are great, so use an image to indicate the, the word give [00:40:00] kids lots and lots of practice with words, you have to use a word 16, 1 6, 16 times, to be able to actually have developed proficiency with that word, so pick a word a day, show them pictures about it.
That word. So, you know, the example I give is a trestle. So I can show you a, you know, I can show you a table that's held up with a trestle. I could show you a bridge, but I'm going to show you pictures. So that will help or facilitate your, you know, development of proficiency with, with the word and then teaching them word, let them use the word.
16 times. So they go out to recess and, you know, in a fun way, they use the word with one another. And then you're constantly repeating the words in the classroom. You could put words in a bag and every day take out a word and have them make sentences, sentences with those words that they've learned, but very, very explicitly make sure that they're building their third grade, fourth grade, you know, eighth grade, 10th grade [00:41:00] vocabulary.
And, and, you know, anyway, that's, that's a critical, there's others, but the, you know, that's, those are some things to be thinking about.
Ross Romano: Yeah, I mean, certainly one of the important things you said a word day, there's young times that young childhood development where that's natural. It's like they're picking up all these words, but then at some point we stop prioritizing that when it's still possible,
Karen Gazith: And we have to prioritize different words, right? Now, it's not, yes, of course, we build everyday language, but now we have to move into the academic language. And the discipline specific language.
Ross Romano: Right. Or thinking about it in terms of, you said, this being, you know, everybody's business, that what are the vocabulary terms that are relevant in different subject areas that need to be explicitly and proactively taught to make sure that during classroom discussions and things that kids can follow along, right?
It's sort of a time when [00:42:00] any, you know, any, any kid who's not. proficient in the, that academic vocabulary is having the experience of what it's like for a second language learner who is struggling, you know, that, who is missing parts of classroom discussion and things because there's certain words they don't know.
And, You know, again, that, that eventually that comes up right in those, in those subject areas, but there might be certain, certain terminologies that are just critical to being able to discuss the subject and understand that may not seem like the key terms that's like, let's make sure that everybody knows these and understand these and can use them.
And how fluency,
Karen Gazith: Fluency. So fluency is the ability to read quickly without error and with proper paucity or cadence. So fluency depends on decoding. So once you've sort of developed proficiency in your ability to decode, now [00:43:00] you have to be able to read quickly without mistakes so that now all your focus is going to go on reading.
comprehension of the text. You're no longer sort of battling to read each word. Now you look at the word and you no longer have to decode it. And the strategy for that is a pretty simple one. It's just, you know, it's, it's a fancy word is, you know, neurobiological, you know, printing in your brain. That's a fancy word, but really it's just repeated reading.
So you give the, your, your students a text to read. The text has to be at their proficiency level, so regardless of what grade you're in, you could be in 8th grade, but you're in a 5th grade reading level, you would need to get a 5th grade text, and you read that same text over and over, now again, you've developed it.
You, you develop proficiency in decoding. You're not struggling to read the word. Again, you, you know the sounds of the letters, but now I have to make sure that it becomes fluent. [00:44:00] So I give them a text to read. That text is at their proficiency level, so it's easy to do an assessment and see what their proficiency level is, and then I have them read that same text five times a day.
The same text for 60 seconds. So they read it, then they go back to the beginning, read it again, and if we do that every single day with our students, and we should do it certainly with all kids until the end of 8th grade, again, except for the kids who are really fluent readers, but, you know, the vast majority of kids are going to need that there is about a word to two words improvement. So they'll read two words more on, you know, a Wednesday than they read on a Tuesday, if we follow that practice of, of repeated reading. So, really effective and essential and teachers, you know, starting in even second grade for those basic words that they've decoded, we should be continuing to work on fluency.
Ross Romano: you know, I would teacher talk about that with [00:45:00] the students. to get the student to stick with it.
Karen Gazith: Mm hmm. For a strange reason, I'm not sure exactly why, kids seem to love working on fluency. So teachers that do, do this in class for like 10 minutes a day, teachers walk in and the first thing that kids, like, are we doing that, that thing today? Are we doing, they love it. First of all, they're reading to a partner.
So one reads and then the other reads. And again, I, you know, talk about it more in the book, but that practice where you read the text five times a day and then your partner reads the text five times a day, kids just really seem to love it. Again, unclear why, maybe because they're working with someone else, and also they see the improvement every single day.
Ross Romano: And so comprehension, the big one,
Karen Gazith: The big one, the most
Ross Romano: but
Karen Gazith: they're all big, yeah, and they all sort of, so we have to, we have to differentiate between comprehension and reading comprehension. Comprehension means your ability to understand text, regardless of who reads it. Reading comprehension is your ability to read and understand the text when [00:46:00] you read it.
So I could have strong comprehension skills. But that doesn't mean that my reading comprehension is strong. how do I know that, for example, if you're working with a student and they're unable to answer questions, you then read the text to them and they're reading, you know, answering the questions, have no issue understanding, you know, the issue is not comprehension.
It's the decoding of the fluency that's getting in the way. Whereas when kids. are reading well. You know, there are some kids, whether you read it to them or they read it by themselves, they have difficulty understanding the text. And that's where we know the focus is on comprehension. So we need to be focusing on comprehension for all kids, starting from the minute they walk into school.
And even, you know, when, when we read them, when we read, you know, books to young kids, we're constantly focusing on Comprehension. We need to continue that for kids, even in early, early grades, we need to read [00:47:00] to them and work on some of these comprehension strategies, but certainly for students in the higher grades, the high school, middle school, high school grades, we need to devote a very significant amount of time to comprehension.
We have to focus on expository text. We spend a whole lot of time reading narratives. But in high school, most of what they need to read and understand is fact based. So starting in the early grades, we need to focus more on fact based text. And there are so many different comprehension strategies that, you know, we can teach them.
One is reciprocal teaching, where we teach them how to summarize the text, ask themselves questions, predict what the text is about. And another is Adler's close reading, where we teach them to read the text three times, and each time they have a different focus of the text. So first, get the big idea.
We'll come back to that in a second. We teach them to understand how the text is structured, you know, how, what the pattern is, is it, you know, compare and [00:48:00] contrast, problem, solution, and then the third reading is to make connections. So they're very, very explicit and specific strategies. that teachers need to employ from the time kids are very young, when you'll be reading to them and using these strategies, to high school classes, where a very significant amount of time needs to be devoted to teaching kids how to understand And a lot of the text that they read, like I said, is expository, fact based text.
Ross Romano: yeah. So at a high level then what, you know, can teachers expect to change once they've committed to, and they're using these approaches for teaching. I mean, you know, other than the obvious kids will learn how to read better, but what changes about teaching and learning the classroom environment once we're.
you know, teaching reading the right way.
Karen Gazith: Yeah. So, I mean, a great question and probably something we can talk about for a very long time, but I think [00:49:00] life becomes a lot more fun for teachers. They, you know, there's a sense of efficacy. They feel like they're now able to open up this world for kids that is a fascinating world. So I think just the whole concept of teacher efficacy I also I, I think, but I, I know from the research that there is a high number of kids who exhibit behavior problems when in fact the problem is that they can't read.
So you gave the example of that student, you remember, in eighth grade who was asked to read, these are the kinds of kids who will act out. to get kicked out of the class because there's nothing more humiliating than being asked to read. They know something's not right. Young kids look around and they, and you mentioned like, academically, they feel so bad about themselves.
So you see a significant decrease in behavioral challenges. So teachers have a greater sense of efficacy, just feel better about. And then as we move forward with teaching, you see a reduced number of behavior problems because kids are not having to mask the fact that they [00:50:00] can't do something. And then we are more efficiently, we're really working as a school community because these are a series of building blocks.
And we're all working together to make sure that the next year's teacher is going to have a class that of students who can thrive, you know, academically, socially and behaviorally. So, you know, again, like you said, besides the obvious, school is just a much more fun, better place for teachers and kids.
Ross Romano: Well, that sounds like a good goal. So
Karen Gazith: who could argue that, right?
Ross Romano: Yes. So listeners, the book is called The Power of Effective Reading Instructions. It's available from Solution Trio, wherever you get your books. And Karen, you also have the website, which is teachingmeanslearning. com. Is there anything in particular people can check out on the website or anything else?
Karen Gazith: So I would say that, yeah, I'd mention this, the Power of Effective Reading Instruction is the first, the second book was Solution Tree. Evidence Based Practice is the, the first, and you can, you'll see the, the title, but it [00:51:00] focuses on evidence based teaching practices. So you can, you can look up those and, you know.
Hopefully, hopefully purchase them and learn more about evidence based practice and teaching kids how to read and there are other podcasts there and you know, different, different things about evidence based teaching practices for, for teachers and for school leaders.
Ross Romano: So, everyone, we'll put those links below to make it easy for you to find all of that and you know, if you heard the end of this conversation, I mean, having a classroom where things are more fun for everyone that's a pretty good goal. And so, check all of this out if you want to make that happen in your classroom.
Please also do subscribe to the Authority. If you haven't already, we have more author interviews coming your way. We have this series going on. right now on Literacy for National Literacy Month, but also many more on leadership and everything else that you can want to know about in education. You can visit bpodcast.
network to learn about all of [00:52:00] our shows and find more episodes on literacy plus many other topics, or visit rif. org to learn about Reading is Fundamental. Haren, thanks again for being here.
Karen Gazith: Thank you.
Creators and Guests
