Ever wondered how to effectively lift your middle school students out of the literacy crisis they're facing? Look no further for answers as we sit with Christine Zimmermann, Senior Manager of Product Marketing on our ELA team, who brings her expertise on reading intervention strategies that will transform your approach to teaching. In our enlightening chat, Christine tackles the perplexing question of how to support students struggling with foundational reading skills and comprehension and underscores the importance of understanding these differences to drive student success across all subjects.
Our conversation goes beyond identifying the literacy challenges that middle school educators face, diving into the use of data to inform impactful teaching strategies. Christine shares invaluable insights on prioritizing critical content to close learning gaps and the specialized resources that can catapult educators toward this goal. This episode is an essential listen for educators across the board, promising to not only enrich your toolkit but also to inspire action that can genuinely make a difference in your students' academic lives. Join us as we explore these compelling strategies with Christine and set the stage for a revolution in literacy intervention for middle schoolers.
Curriculum Associates presents the Extraordinary Educators podcast with hosts Danielle Sullivan and Sarah Loveris. Here tips, best practices and successes to improve your teaching and leadership and drive student growth and learning. We're here for you.
Danielle Sullivan:
Hello everybody, Welcome to the Extraordinary Educator podcast. I'm Danielle.
Sari Laberis:
And I'm Sarah. Today we are so excited to be joined by our amazing colleague, christine Zimmerman, who is a senior manager, product marketing, on our ELA team here at CA.
Danielle Sullivan:
And Christine created this e-book which she talks about that. Hey, middle school educators, out there, are you struggling with reading? Intervention I bet you are. So, christine, and this podcast is sharing some just insight on how to begin to approach supporting students at the middle school level who are struggling with reading.
Sari Laberis:
Absolutely. And if you're not a middle school teacher, think about this as a way to kind of get insight into what your colleagues at the middle school level might have to grapple with, and hopefully that will help you know, rethink or reframe your thinking around how you're teaching reading or supporting reading with your students. So here's our conversation with Christine. Hey, Christine, it's so great to have you here.
Danielle Sullivan:
Hi, thanks for having me. So, christine, what have you been thinking about lately or working on lately?
Christine Zimmermann:
So lately I've been doing a lot of work around our intervention programs for middle school students, specifically around literacy, and thinking about how we provide these interventions for middle school students in a meaningful way.
Danielle Sullivan:
Well, that's just a light topic that you know. Well, let's dig into that. So I know, as a former middle school teacher myself and a former special ed middle school teacher, that is a very challenging topic. So how are you starting to think about it? Approaching that? Strategies, all the things?
Christine Zimmermann:
So I'm part of a team that helps develop content resources and marketing materials for our middle school literacy products, and one of the things that I've been thinking about is we can really separate our students who struggle with literacy at the middle school level into a few groups and for those who need, who are in need of an intervention. There are the students who are struggling at the word level, who are struggling with their foundational reading skills, and then we also have the students who are struggling with comprehension, and each of those groups needs need two different things and in teachers need resources to support both of those groups separately.
Sari Laberis:
That's super interesting. And so if I'm a middle school teacher or, you know, an upper elementary teacher, listening, how do? Once I have the data kind of how do, how do I begin to figure out the next best step? I think it's. We are obviously in a literacy crisis right now and I think everyone probably has students who need that extra support, but particularly middle school teachers. They have so many students and not not enough time in the day to, you know, work one on one with all of them, for example. So what do you kind of recommend? Any best practices or ways teachers can start shaping their mindset around this?
Christine Zimmermann:
Yeah, yeah, thanks for asking that. So at a middle school level, we have this additional challenge where a student who's struggling in their English class, for instance, a student who's struggling to read, is going to be, is going to have challenges in each and every subject area. They're going to math class, they're going to social studies and they're going to experience these problems again and again, these challenges, because because they're unable to read the content. So once we have the data and once we understand, does this is a student struggling at the world level or is a student struggling with comprehension we then, as middle school educators, get to focus on the critical content. What is most critical? Because our goal is to get these students to a point, to accelerate their, their learning, to a point where they can thrive in their one of classrooms as quickly as possible. And in order to do so, we have to be really thoughtful about what is most critical, what, what is the absolutely essential content in order to close that gap for them as quickly as possible.
Danielle Sullivan:
That is a very important topic. Like to understand the difference between students that are struggling at the word level versus comprehension. What are the ways that we're supporting educators and thinking through that, and what resources do we recommend that educators use?
Christine Zimmermann:
Great Thank you for asking that. So one of the pieces that I've been working on recently is actually a resource, an e-book, for educators asking those questions about how can we support our students, whether they're struggling at the word level or with comprehension. So, for instance, one of the recommendations for students struggling at the word level is to focus on multisyllabic words. Why multisyllabic words? Well, students who are in middle school struggling with reading across all subject areas are encountering multisyllabic words in their content, and for them to be able to break those words down and derive meaning for them is critical for them to be able to make sense of that content. And, by contrast, students at grades K2 learning phonics can spend more time on single syllable words. But we really don't have any time to waste at the middle school level, so it's important that we give students the tools they need to make sense of what they're reading as quickly as possible. So the focus for them is on multisyllable words.
Sari Laberis:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for that, christine, and for all of your insights. Unfortunately, that is all the time we have for this podcast today, but we will link the ebook in the show notes for those interested in it. It's super, super helpful and insightful. So great having you here and yeah, that's all for today. Get inspired by following us on social media and please tag us in your posts on Twitter, at curriculumassoch, and on Instagram, at myirety. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or want to be a guest, email extraordinaryeducatorsatcainccom. Subscribe where you listen to podcasts and if you'd like to help more educators like you join the conversation, please leave a review.
Danielle Sullivan:
And remember, be you be true, be extraordinary. The Extraordinary Educators Podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates. Editing by Whiteboard Geeks, social media by Atstie Hannan, guest booking by Sarri LaBearis, production by Hailey Browning. This podcast is copyright, material and intellectual property of Curriculum Associates.