The Extraordinary Educators Podcast

Transforming Reading Instruction with Emily Castelli

• Sari Laberis • Season 6 • Episode 8

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What if small group reading instruction is the missing puzzle piece in your classroom strategy? Join us as we sit down with the passionate and insightful Emily Castelli, a dedicated second-grade teacher from West Virginia, who will forever change the way you think about the science of reading. Emily unpacks common misconceptions and highlights the enduring importance of small group interventions, even as the educational landscape shifts towards structured literacy approaches. Her recommendations offer educators practical tools to ensure their teaching methods are research-based and effective.

Our conversation with Emily is a highlight of passion and expertise that promises to inspire educators everywhere. We delve into how small group strategies can seamlessly integrate into a multi-tiered system of support, enhancing tier one education for all students. As we wrap up, we extend our heartfelt thanks to Emily and invite our listeners to continue the conversation with us on social media. Your feedback, topic suggestions, and guest nominations are what fuel our community. Subscribe, leave us a review, and let's continue to explore the transformative world of education together.

Read Emily's blog: CurriculumAssociates.com/blog/reading-instruction-strategies
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Have feedback, questions, or want to be a guest? Email ExtraordinaryEducators@cainc.com to connect with us!

Sari Laberis:

Hey everyone, Welcome back to the Extraordinary Educators podcast. It's Sari, and this week I am joined by the incredible Extraordinary Educator, Emily Castelli, who is a second grade teacher in West Virginia and she is obsessed with the science of reading. So if you are too, you will absolutely love this episode. And if you aren't as familiar, you will love this episode too, because Emily does such a beautiful job in breaking down these complex topics and talking about how you can better implement the science of reading with your students and really thinking about what is best for your students and how to advocate for exactly what they need. So I hope you enjoy my conversation with Emily. I definitely love talking to her here. It is Welcome, Emily. It is so great to have you here on the podcast. I am so excited to talk to you today, Hi.

Emily Castelli:

I'm really, really excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Sari Laberis:

Of course. So let's dive right in. I know science of reading is a topic that's near and dear to your heart and obviously super important, and you are also a part of a lot of teacher online communities and helping your school, and so tell us about what are some misconceptions or things that you're thinking about lately as it pertains to the science of reading.

Emily Castelli:

With the science of reading.

Emily Castelli:

I'm seeing a lot of misconceptions about small group reading instruction and I think it's because for a long time in the country people were going solely based off of balanced literacy small groups such as the leveled readers and some teachers are saying that they are not allowed to do small group reading instruction anymore.

Emily Castelli:

But you're actually supposed to, because I did my thesis on small group reading interventions and I found a lot of them that were effective. So I do think small group reading is definitely important and teachers should definitely still do it. They should take a more structured literacy approach to it. For example, whenever teachers do their beginning of the year assessments, one of them you could do is a phonics diagnostic and you will find the lowest skill that your student has not mastered yet and you can take that and then make your small groups with it for students with similar skill deficits, and then that could be what you work on for your small groups, and then that could be what you work on for your small groups instead of trying to push them through the leveled books that are like level A, b, c, d and so on. So I am getting a little nervous about seeing that teachers are being told not to do small group instruction, because it is really important to fill in those gaps.

Sari Laberis:

Yeah, thank you for sharing all that. It's really fascinating. It seems like the pendulum has swung a little bit too far one way. Why do you think that this is such a misconception out there that, okay, now that we're implementing signs of reading, we can't have small group instruction anymore?

Emily Castelli:

Well, I did just graduate from Mount St Joseph University and part of my coursework involved a lot of learning about the multi-tiered systems of support, also known as MTSS, and part of MTSS is you should have a strong tier one, and when people think of tier one, they think of just whole group instruction and you can differentiate your whole group instruction.

Emily Castelli:

But a misconception on that is that tier one just has to be whole group. I'm part of Dr Stephanie Stoller's Reading Science Academy and something that she has put out in her lessons is that you can do small groups in your tier one and it's really important to do that for foundational skills. So, for example, you could use your whole group tier one instruction for the language comprehension side of the reading rope and then for foundational skills, you might have students well, you'll probably will have students just at different levels all throughout your classroom and you can use your small group instruction to address the word recognition part of the reading rope and that still counts as tier one. So what I'm kind of thinking is school districts are like okay, we need to make our tier one instruction most effective, so we need to stop doing small groups when really that's not the case, because small groups can still occur in your tier one, right right, exactly.

Sari Laberis:

Thank you so much for sharing that Super fascinating. So you clearly are, you know, really passionate about the science of reading and such an expert If there are folks listening who are either just getting started or maybe they've had some PD on it but they're a little bit unfamiliar. You know a lot of resources, you're part of a lot of different communities and stuff. What are some resources you'd recommend if you're just getting started or you want to ensure that the practices you're doing in your classroom are indeed aligned to the science of reading?

Emily Castelli:

When I first got started about the science of reading I wasn't a student at Mount St Joseph yet and some of the things I found online that were really good. Now I teach second grade, but when I was trying to search for things I found there are free heartword videos from Really Great Reading that I think are also really useful to share to parents. So you can search their Heartward Magic website. There's also the Florida Center for Reading Research and they have fabulous activities for all grades. It goes up I can't remember if it's to fifth grade, I think it might even go higher than that and those are all free. So I would pull those to work with kids. So that is also really good.

Emily Castelli:

There are a lot of really good books. I think Scholastic just came out with a science of reading series and the books aren't I don't think they're very dense. Some of the books I read were quite dense and it can be hard to read those if you don't have a lot of background knowledge about the science of reading. So as a good start, definitely look into the Scholastic series that's came out. I think one of the good ones is Seven Mighty Moves by Lindsay Kemeny. That one is really good. I think teachers should definitely read that if they are trying to shift their instruction more towards the research.

Sari Laberis:

That you just named off a whole list. That is so, so helpful. Thank you, emily. No, that's amazing. We'll link everything in the show notes, too that Emily just described, as well as her blog. She wrote about the science of reading. So thank you for all those, Emily, incredibly helpful. Is there anything else, either tips or best practices or techniques that you have found helpful while you're teaching your students in terms of the science of reading? Anything else you want to share? Yeah, absolutely.

Emily Castelli:

So my school we'd noticed an issue with our phonemic awareness and phonics scores and so our primary team we really just came together and we're like we have to figure out a way to help our kids and so kind of started a shift in my school district towards the science of reading in a way.

Emily Castelli:

So we adopted two programs, one for phonemic awareness, one for phonics, and I think that advocating is so important and our school district adopted both of those programs for every school in our county now and I thought it was kind of cool because you know we started it. But I think, if there are teachers out there who may not have access to materials that follow the research, to try to advocate for it, because all kids have the right to learn to read. It kind of ate me alive every night whenever I didn't have what I needed to help my most struggling readers, and I'm sure there are other teachers who go home and worry about their kids too. It's hard to turn off our teacher brain. So definitely look into your programs, google, do your research, make sure that they are including what they need. And also we have to be mindful too, because there are a lot of things out there that just say science of reading. That might not be aligned to the research, if you know what I'm saying.

Sari Laberis:

Yes, slap it on there without much checking.

Emily Castelli:

Yeah, it's kind of becoming like a marketing strategy, which makes me nervous. But, teachers, you know you can make a difference if you speak up for your kids and don't forget to advocate for what you need to.

Sari Laberis:

That is incredibly powerful, Emily, and I do have one quick follow up question before we close out. So definitely true, and teachers should feel empowered to advocate. And you're right, every student does have the right to read. Where do you start If I'm a teacher? Wow, I either that this program doesn't align or I want to do more of this, or I see the concerning data, like you did.

Emily Castelli:

Who did you talk to first? Where do you begin in terms of advocating? So when we noticed that we really needed to fix this, we started with our building principal and my building principal. He was really interested and he is fabulous, he cares about what we think, and so we went to him and we said, hey, like we found this program and we want to try it. And he said, okay, let's do it. So definitely start with your building principle, I think. And then, even before that, I mean, we talked to each other. So it's really important that everybody is willing to work together to make the shift.

Sari Laberis:

Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you so much, emily. This was an incredibly insightful conversation and you can just hear the passion and expertise in your voice and everything you say, so we really appreciate you.

Emily Castelli:

Thank you.

Sari Laberis:

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