The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Best practices, tips, and stories to help you be extraordinary in your classroom and beyond, featuring Curriculum Associates' Director of the Educator Community Sari Laberis.
The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Empowering Older Striving Readers with Josh Hall
Unlock the secrets to supporting older striving readers with Josh Hall, Senior National Director of Content and Implementation at Curriculum Associates. Join us as Josh shares his wealth of experience and insights into helping students in the upper grades tackle the challenge of decoding complex, multi-syllabic words. Whether you're teaching math, science, or any subject, you’ll discover practical strategies that can be seamlessly integrated into any classroom to enhance students' reading abilities and overall learning experience.
Josh introduces high-leverage techniques from experts like Dr. Anita Archer and Dr. Devin Kearns, focusing on word attack strategies such as chunking and looping. Learn how vowel recognition can be a game-changer for students struggling with reading, and why understanding syllables is crucial. These methods are not just for reading teachers; they're essential tools for educators across all disciplines to ensure their students can read and comprehend the tasks at hand. Don't miss this opportunity to equip yourself with the skills needed to empower your students and transform their educational journey.
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Hey everyone, it's Sari. Welcome back to the Extraordinary Educators podcast. This week I'm joined by my amazing colleague, josh Hall, who is the Senior National Director of Content and Implementation at Curriculum Associates, and Josh is really passionate about how we can support older striving readers. So no matter what you teach what subject, older striving readers. So no matter what you teach, what subject, how old your students are, what the techniques and strategies that Josh describes can definitely be applied to your practice. So here is my conversation with Josh. Enjoy. Welcome, josh. It is so great to have you back on the podcast. Thanks so much for being here.
Speaker 2:It is so great to be back.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, let's jump right in. You have been traveling a lot, working with educators across the country. What is on your mind recently as you are talking to tons of educators?
Speaker 2:Oh, that is a great question. There's always a lot running through my mind as I'm talking with educators, but one topic or one thing that's coming up over and over and something that's actually really near and dear to my heart is how do we help those older striving learners who have made it into the upper grades, they've made it to middle school and they're having a really hard time decoding the words on the page? We know that as early as third grade, the majority of words in a student's text or the books that we're putting in front of them is multi-syllabic words. And yet we have some kids who they they struggle so much, not just in reading but when we think about it, being able to read. Grade level text extends into math and science and social studies. So that's really been on my mind lately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it extends into everything their homework, whatever independent work period. They have to be able to read in order to execute what's being asked of them no-transcript.
Speaker 2:So, first of all, what we know from some research, from many such as Dr Nina Archer is that older learners or older students who have a difficult time with reading, that have persistent reading difficulties, they're often challenged by multi-syllabic words and I know I alluded to that, but that's why we know that that is what is tripping them up oftentimes, and we know that they have a hard time decoding those words because they don't have a strategy to do so. So as educators, it's our job to give them a strategy. Give them a word attack strategy. When you come to a long word, this is what you do. There's a lot of high leverage practices that teachers can use to support students in learning how to decode multi-syllabic words and a couple of strategies from what Works Clearinghouse and from research and from good teaching.
Speaker 2:A couple of strategies that we can use to support students is, first of all, teaching them how to chunk and loop.
Speaker 2:So we need to teach them how do you break a long word apart, and one of the strategies that I actually got from Dr Devin Kearns he has a strategy called Eshalav.
Speaker 2:Every syllable has at least one vowel. So the first thing we can do to help our students is help them realize that anytime you see a vowel or a vowel team, like I know, that's a syllable. And as I step back and think about some of the older striving learners that I taught when I taught third grade and did some reading intervention in elementary school is did those students realize that every syllable has at least one vowel or every has a vowel team in it? But the first thing we can do is just teaching our students to let's first of all find those vowels and vowel teams and that's going to let us know how many syllables this multi-syllabic word has. Dr Anita Archer has the looping strategy that maybe those of you familiar with phonics for reading have seen, where again we are just training our students to break the words into those chunks. So that's one high leverage practice is teaching our students how to chunk words into the different syllables.
Speaker 1:That's really helpful, though, Josh, just to pause for a second, because even if I'm a middle school math educator or, you know, no matter what I teach knowing that strategy, if I have older students, is going to be helpful, because if they're struggling with the exact concept you just defined, you know figuring out those, those multisyllabic words I can help break it down for them in that way.
Speaker 2:So thank you for sharing that, Even into the, even until your science and social studies you've got those long multisyllabic domain specific words. Well, let's pre-teach it, let's chunk the word out, let's find those vowels. It all comes together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and adding, even just like a little, think aloud as you're teaching a new science concept to your eighth graders, right? Because that word's going to be unfamiliar to all of them. Have them practice saying it. Show them how you chunked it right. Defining those different syllables could be really helpful, so I'm curious to hear if you have another strategy up your sleeve that you can share with our listeners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Another high leverage practice is really to focus on morphology. Right, and we know morphology. Those are the units of meaning within words and not only is focusing on morphology going to support them in being able to decode those longer words, it's also going to give them access to the meaning of lots of words. So, focusing on morphology, and from research we know that poor readers are more likely to mispronounce those affixes and vowels and omit syllables, and the research shows that when they're decoding those unknown multisyllabic words, it's to their advantage to know those prefixes and suffixes. So it just it's another thing again that extends over into all the content areas, because how many of our science and social studies words have the prefixes and the suffixes and the morphology would not only help them with understanding what those words mean, but will also help them as they are looking where to chunk those longer words up.
Speaker 1:That's really helpful. Thank you for that. I think it can kind of be overwhelming to think about if you teach any grade, just all the standards you have to cover, the scope and sequence, all of that, and just to think like adding this into your practice On top of that, especially if you're not familiar with the language standards at your grade level. What advice do you have for these teachers in order to just like wrap their head around it or understand that this, this is possible in their classrooms and they can help their students learn how to read better, even if that's not their subject area?
Speaker 2:Something that I always try to keep in mind when I'm working, or when I worked with struggling readers, is we know there's a lot that goes into becoming a proficient or a skilled reader. And to break it down, I'm sure we're all familiar with the simple view of reading right, that word recognition, that language comprehension, that both of those parts are critical to developing skilled readers. And it's not a plus sign in the equation, it's a multiplication sign. So it's a multiplicative effect that they're having on each other. And when I think about that, if I have a student, let's say their word recognition is a one and their language comprehension is a nine right, that's still. Their overall comprehension is one times nine is nine. But if I'm bumping that up, if they have really strong language comprehension and I'm able to bump up that word recognition to say a five, now five times nine is 45. Like we've had a huge increase in that overall reading comprehension. And so it's when I think about it in that way, it gives me a little bit of hope.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for that, josh. I think we will end on that inspiring note. We appreciate your expertise and insights, as always, and I'm sure our listeners will really enjoy this episode. So thanks again for being here.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Get inspired by following us on social media and please tag us in your posts on X at Curriculum Asoche and on Instagram at my Eye, ready. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or if you want to be a guest email extraordinaryeducators at cainccom. Please subscribe where you listen to podcasts and if you'd like to help more educators, just like you, join the conversation and please leave a review. Remember, be you, be true, be extraordinary. The Extraordinary Educators podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates, editing by Shane Lowe, social media by Atsiti Hanan, guest booking by Sari LaBarris and production by Haley Browning. This podcast is copyrighted materials and intellectual property of Curriculum Associates.