- Hello, and welcome to an Ohio Learns 360 family webinar.

I'm Amy Juravich from WOSU Public Media.

We're here today to discuss literacy for young learners.

Learning to read is complex, and it takes years to master the skill.

Kids don't merely pick up reading by themselves.

So what's the best way to teach literacy to young children?

We will talk about the science of reading and hopefully provide some tips for families to use at home.

Joining us for this discussion is Rebecca Pitcher, a literacy supervisor for the Montgomery County Educational Services Center in Dayton.

Welcome, Rebecca.

- Nice to be here.

Thank you.

- [Amy] And also with us is Tricia Merenda, a literacy and English language arts specialist at the Ohio Department of Education.

Welcome.

- Thank you.

- And you both have a lot of experience with teaching young children how to read, years of experience.

So is there a single best method for teaching young children to read?

- Thank you, Amy.

I think that's a really good question, and it's on the hearts and minds of a lot of parents right now, and what we know that there are the most effective practices to helping kids learn how to read.

So in schools, we think about what to teach, the content.

So it's that sound awareness piece, that phonemic awareness piece, especially in kindergarten and 1st grade, phonics, fluency, which is accuracy and that natural rate of reading, vocabulary, and then comprehension.

Those are all the five pillars that we really wanna hit on in that early elementary piece, so that's what we teach.

Then how we teach it, especially for those foundational skills in kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade, it's about explicit teaching.

So assume nothing.

Make sure that it's rocked solid, those foundational skills, and that we have a scope and sequence, a building of those skills in K, 1, and 2 for those phonics concepts, super important, especially when they get to grades four and five and they're working in really complex readings.

We wanna make sure they can navigate those readings and they don't have any issues with multisyllabic or words with multiple syllables.

So we know that what to teach, how to teach, and then early intervention is really, really key.

So students who have tender spots in certain areas, we wanna make sure that we work on those so that they have that foundation for intermediate as well.

- Okay, and Tricia mentioned this idea of tender spots.

So can you expand upon that a little bit, Rebecca?

When you say a child has a tender spot, what do we need to focus on?

- It depends on the area.

A student might have some struggles with being able to hear rhyming in words and sounds and being able to articulate different sounds and decoding words or sounding out a word is how I learned it when I was younger.

Using explicit instruction to help students really understand and identify those sounds in each word, and then there's also areas of comprehension that we use different strategies to help those students as well.

- Yeah, so we were talking about, you know, you mentioned a lot of things, vocabulary, phonics.

I mean, there's a lot in there.

So can you talk a little bit more about that phonics piece?

Like, you know, Rebecca just mentioned, you know, it's sounding out words, right?

But really, are we learning like what the letters can do?

Is that right?

- Yeah.

- So you're learning the sounds.

There are 44 sounds in the English language, and then you're also learning the letters and applying the sounds to letters, and like you're learning those consonant vowel consonant words like cat or dog, and you're applying those letter-sound relationships to that scope and sequence that we are learning.

- Okay.

You wanna expand a little bit more on the, you know, idea of decoding, as you called it, instead of like, so we learned it as sounding out the words, right?

So could talk about what decoding means.

- So essentially if I'm teaching a word, like shut, for example, S-H is a diagraph.

So I wanna make sure that the students understand that it's not S H. It's sh.

So I'm teaching that phoneme or that correspondence between when a child sees S-H, they know that they're going to say sh.

And then I do a lot of multisensory with my students where we'll actually tap out our word.

So if the word was shut, we'd say, "Sh-ut, shut," like that.

So they're actually able to be able to see it, say it, but then use a part of their body to help them remember those phonemes or those sounds.

- I mean, I don't know that I remember kindergarten, right?

Did we do that, you know, 20 years ago?

Has the way that we teach reading changed a lot?

Did we sound things out and do the tapping thing?

- Yeah, I think it depends where you went to school, but in some contexts, we have so much research now that we really understand how important that sound piece is.

For students who have language-based needs, it often is in that area, so that's why we wanna hone in on that as much as possible.

And that explicit instruction piece, we have more research on that now as well, that it's good for all students, but it's imperative for those students who have some real language-based needs as well.

- Okay, and I read, there's like a phrase that people use where they say that, "Reading is taught, not caught."

So even kids who have been read to every single day since they were born can struggle with reading when they get to kindergarten.

Is that true?

- Yes, that is true.

Definitely read to your children.

We want them hearing sounds and building their oral language, but yes, we do have some students that have difficulty or have those tender spots, and so a way that we could work with them is, originally, your brain was not meant to read.

There was a back part of your brain, your occipital lobe, that babies use to recognize faces.

And so what we're doing is we're training the brain and building neuro pathways to help students be able to identify the phoneme or the sound S-H and know that it says sh and then put it together with the word shut and then know what the word shut means, and so we're explicitly teaching them those skills.

So yes, read to your children, sing to your children, label things in your classroom, immerse them in words, but we will need to do a little bit more, especially for those students who struggle a little bit, more explicit.

- Yeah, Rebecca, I think, too, because we all know that like oral language is natural, and so we think that reading is natural, but we know that, with more research now, we know it really needs to be explicitly taught.

- So let's talk a little bit about the pandemic.

Obviously, that's the elephant in the room at this time.

Are we still in like reading recovery mode from the pandemic?

- I think it depends what school and what principal and teachers you talk to.

I think those schools that feel that they have those strong foundational skills in kindergarten, 1st grade, and those students were able to secure their learning in those grades.

They had a strong foundation, so they could just pick up kind of where they left off.

Those students who missed that foundational piece and now they're in 4th grade, there is a little bit of a gap.

And so I know schools are really working hard.

Teachers all over the state of Ohio are working hard to go back and remediate those gaps as much as possible.

- And I read somewhere that a lot of people are trying to say, "Let's not focus on catching them up but more so meeting them where they are and moving forward."

Would you agree with that?

- Well, I think you're looking at your grade level.

So if you're in kindergarten or 1st and 2nd grade, that scope and sequence in phonics, you wanna make sure that you are meeting them exactly where they left off in their phonic scope and sequence and building on from that.

So I think it depends on what particular subject or area you're talking about as well.

- Okay.

So what's a way that we can help with this, you know, catching up or meeting, meeting them where they are?

Are we seeing a lot more like teachers, classroom teachers spending more time on reading than they used to in the past, or does it need to be, you know, extra tutoring, or like, what's the best way?

- I think teachers are changing how they're teaching reading based on their students and the needs of their students.

If we have some children that need a stronger foundation because they may have missed that, then they're gonna have a small group and do some interventions and some explicit instruction with those students to help kind of, it's like Swiss cheese.

There's some holes that need to be filled.

So it really just depends on the grade level and the students and the teachers to see where we can best fill in those gaps and build that foundation so that they don't have any areas that continue to grow in the wrong direction, if that makes sense.

- Yeah.

So what can parents do at home to help with the reading?

I mean, I as a parent, I don't know that I would be perfect at helping my kid learn to sound things out and doing the phonics thing and the tapping.

I'm not sure that I would know what I was doing.

- Well, I think that falls a lot on us, the educators.

I know we are trying to have family nights where parents can come in and I can talk to families about some things that they can do specifically for their children and then watching their children participate in some activities where they're actually tapping out communication between the teacher and the parent, the families, letting them know some things that they can do at home and what we're doing in the classroom as far as, "This is exactly tapping," or, "Tell me what you, what you've done today."

And they can read about what we are doing with their child and then practice doing those things.

Communication is key.

So if parents, families, guardians have questions, let your child's teacher know.

Ask those questions because we know it's a team.

As a teacher, we cannot do this alone.

We need your help, and so that's really important.

- And that, I feel like also that listening comprehension piece, especially in kindergarten and 1st grade along with the phonics, is super important.

So hearing rich read aloud stories with lots of complexity and lots of vocabulary, either, you know, a parent reading it or hearing it aloud audio wise is super, super helpful for those students as well.

- Oh, that's a good idea, too.

Obviously, you want everyone reading to their child but that you can also have them listen to a story or like a story through a podcast or something like that?

- Right, right.

- Is that what you mean?

- Yeah.

There's so many resources now online as well where authors are reading books to students.

So that brings back that joy of reading as well.

- Right, and it doesn't even have to be just the audio.

Could it be an author reading a book on a video, too?

- Yes, yes, yes.

- Sure.

- Okay.

I think that that would probably be fun and engaging for, you know, children nowadays who love to spend time on their screens, right?

- And our public libraries do such a nice job in Ohio as well as having so many resources for parents.

So that's a great resource as well as readingrockets.org has lots of family guides and different languages for parents about activities that they can do at home, similar to what Rebecca said about the sounds at home, as well as different play you can do with reading books.

- So readingrockets.org?

- Yes.

- It's a website that you can go and, can you find book lists on there?

- They do have 100 books listed just for enjoyment and reading levels that they do have that as well.

- Okay, so it's something that you could look at the book list and maybe find a few to get out of the library.

But, I mean, librarians are such a good resource for that, too, yes, yes.

- They are.

They are, yeah.

- Well, this is an Ohio Learns 360 webinar, and we are discussing literacy for young learners.

We would like to thank Ohio Learns 360 and the Ohio Department of Education for their support of this initiative.

the Ohio Learns 360 partnership, which is between Ohio's eight PBS stations with support from the Ohio Department of Education.

At a statewide level, Ohio Learns 360 will be supporting families, educators, and students through community events, after-school programs, summer programs, and virtual programs like this one.

Ohiolearns360.org is a place where you can learn more.

With us in the studio is Tricia Merenda, a literacy specialist with the Ohio Department of Education with more than 30 years of experience in education, and Rebecca Pitcher, a literacy supervisor in Dayton with 28 years of experience as a classroom teacher and a reading specialist.

Now families were able to submit questions in advance for our webinar guests.

So I have a question from Caitlin, and Caitlin wants to know ways to improve a child's reading comprehension.

She gives an example.

She says, "My 1st grader is excellent at sounding out words and reading in general, but if I ask him what he just read about, he has trouble telling me, and he has to go back and read it a second time.

So do you have any tips to help him comprehend what he's reading the first time around?"

- Excellent question.

In school, a lot of times, we do something called an interactive read aloud where I am reading to my students and I'm stopping and pausing and discussing vocabulary or asking questions regarding the characters.

Perhaps there's a problem or a solution or something that is going on and a conflict that the children can talk about in the middle of reading it and not waiting until the end of the story.

So it's really important that you interact with your child and ask questions as you are going along.

Stop and pause.

Sometimes I do a turn and talk where I'll ask a question, and my students will turn and talk to each other.

You can do that if you're reading aloud to your children.

You have two, three, four, five kids at home and you're reading and you can say, "Let's pause for a minute.

Let's reflect and think about what's happening here in the story."

And you can do that with nonfiction as well, not just fiction and fantasy.

It works well across all genres.

So that is something that we do a lot and I encourage my parents and families, to don't just sit and read and just make sure that we are all together in it, and make it very interactive.

- Interactive stories.

Okay.

Yeah, go ahead.

You wanna add something about comprehension?

- No, I think those interactive and intentional read alouds are just super important, and I'm thinking about some of our new English learners, and that's really how they build their vocabulary, and so that's super important for them.

- So I know that the idea of some students, like what Caitlin was saying, was that her child is a good reader but has trouble with the comprehension piece, but then in the flip side, there are some students who can comprehend a story.

They can like tell the whole thing back to you if you read it to them, but they have trouble with the actual words on the page and getting it.

Is that a brain to mouth connection, too?

- Do- - So yeah, their listening comprehension might be excellent, but they are having trouble decoding the words, and so that's the specific area we wanna work on with them.

Or you might have a student who really comprehends well, but they're not a great speller in that writing and coding piece.

And so I think years ago we used to think that, "Oh, some people are spellers and some people aren't," but we've learned more now that there's more connection with reading and writing and spelling.

Like spelling is super important.

It kind of tells the tale of what that student needs are, so we also wanna work on spelling with those students.

So all of those areas are super important.

You might have a student you really thought or a child you really thought was doing well in 1st and 2nd grade, and then you noticed the spelling at the beginning of 3rd grade, and that's something to work on.

- Hmm.

Okay, that's interesting.

I'm not great at spelling.

I was never gonna win a spelling bee, so maybe I need to go all the way back and think about that back in kindergarten.

Is that right?

- I think it's because, a lot of times, you said it at the beginning that English is complex, but it's not crazy.

There is a logic to it.

I think we think it's so complex that we can't learn the rules, but we can.

Some people can know it.

There's a few of us who can know it intuitively, but others, we really need to learn the rules of spelling, and so that's super important.

- I mean, I think sometimes I think English is crazy.

I mean, there's certain words that like look exactly the same but they don't rhyme, you know, that that kind of thing.

For someone who is learning English as a second language or a different language is spoken at home, can you talk about that idea of just like learning the rules of the English language?

Like, I mean, you start with them, you know, at a very young age, and you just have to like pick them up or you- - Well, again, it's explicit instruction, and a lot of words come from Latin bases or Greek bases, what is it, medieval English?

So if we know that background, we can teach specific rules based on that.

Like when to use T-C-H versus C-H, I'm gonna explicitly teach my students, "T-C-H is going to come at the end of a word after a short vowel.

We're gonna use C-H at the beginning."

Now again, there are exceptions, and we call those high frequency words, and we have different ways of teaching high frequency words, but is it 50% of English is pretty much you can decode it and then the rest of it, there are words, like the word, give me a word, width?

No, that one works.

What, W-H-A-T.

So most students would look at what, and they know that W-H makes that wh sound, but A-T says at.

So if we're teaching them to look at what, and we know that at least the first W-H makes that, and then we just have to memorize the A-T.

Sometimes I'll have my kids put a little heart over top of the part they need to know by heart so that they can remember about the A-T.

So being able to differentiate between the decoding and then the high frequency words.

- Oh, go ahead.

Did you want- - And then when you get to 4th and 5th grade, whether you're a new English learner or someone who's been in the country the whole time, those words that have multiple syllables, it's easier to break them down when you've had that foundation in kindergarten and 1st grade that Rebecca was talking about.

- And we work on teaching the syllable types so that students can identify and be able to break out the multisyllabic words, multi-syllable words so they know when it's an open vowel or a closed vowel, and we're explicitly teaching that.

It's remarkable what students can do when you unlock that code and they are able to read those giant words.

I even have some gifted students in 6th grade.

We are working on some phonics instruction that may have been missed out earlier in their foundation, and once they understand the six syllable types and the phonemes, they're able to decode those new words, and they're not asking, you know, "What is this word?"

Revolution.

They know T-I-O-N.

They know how to break up the syllables.

- Okay.

- And Amy, you had asked her earlier about what's changed, you know, 20 years ago.

I would say colleges are looking differently about how they're training teachers.

Some of the items that Rebecca just talked about, you know, we didn't have classes in that.

We kind of learned that on our own and so forth, but now there are more colleges that are teaching that because it's so specific and so needed in our schools.

- And I wanted to take a little bit of time to talk about something that is known kind of in Ohio.

It's called the Third Grade Reading Guarantee.

So is it still true that, you know, for kindergarten through 3rd grade, you learn to read, and, then from 3rd grade on, you read to learn?

Is that still something that's true?

And then a after you answer that, we'll get into the- - I mean, I guess you could say it's generally true, but we are reading to learn as well in kindergarten through 3rd grade because students are really getting lots of background knowledge.

We're building book texts or text sets, we call them, and multiple topics.

So building background knowledge in those younger years is super important as well.

Like sometimes we kind of have left that off, but we know that's super important, too.

- I'm just wondering is that why 3rd grade was chosen as this year?

So the idea was they wanted everyone to be able to read at grade level in 3rd grade, right?

- Yeah, and I think it was based on some research that, at 3rd grade, things start to get more complex in the different readings that you have in social studies, science and other areas.

So it's important to get by that age level and to get them proficient and at benchmark.

- Okay, what do you think?

There was talk of trying to like change whether we had a Third Grade Reading Guarantee or there was a bill that didn't go through of whether we should get rid of it.

Do you think we need something like a Third Grade Reading Guarantee where it says that you're going to be at grade level at 3rd grade?

- So really, all the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, the roots of that is we're just taking a temperature check on students, right?

We're monitoring.

We're taking that screener or that diagnostic.

Where are they, right?

And those students that have some of those tender spots, then those teachers are doing some more intensive instruction in certain areas that are needed, and they're progress monitoring where that child is so that they can get to benchmark by 3rd grade and beyond.

So that's really the roots of it, and so I think that part will always stay.

- And it does start in kindergarten.

It's not just 3rd grade.

"Here we are, let's take a test."

We wanna see where our students come in at kindergarten and, again, do a temperature check kindergarten.

Are they having areas that we need to work on?

1st grade, same thing so that, by the time they get to 3rd grade, we're not trying to close gaps.

We've started with that foundation in kindergarten.

So I think that's the purpose behind it is to make sure that we're not just waiting to 3rd grade to see, "Oh, can they read?

Are they on grade level?"

- Okay.

And thank you again for joining us.

This is an Ohio Learns 360 webinar, and we're talking about literacy for young learners.

I'm Amy Juravich.

This webinar is a part of initiative between Ohio's eight PBS stations with support from the Ohio Department of Education.

At the statewide level, Ohio Learns 360 is supporting families, educators, and students through virtual programs, including series like this.

Find out more at ohiolearns360.org.

And again, we're talking with Rebecca Pitcher, a literacy supervisor for the Montgomery County Educational Services Center, and with us is Tricia Merenda, a literacy and English language arts specialist at the Ohio Department of Education.

And from one of our families who submitted a question in advance, Melissa wrote, and Melissa has a toddler and wants to know the best way to start early literacy at a very young age.

Would you like to take that, Rebecca?

- I would love to take that!

Rhyming, singing in the bathtub.

You can have foam letters and just make it fun through play.

When my girls were little, we would play in the tub and build words and C-A-T, you know, or their names.

Label around your house.

Immerse them in words so that they can see, "Oh, this is, this is a table," or even just the beginning, the T so that they can see that table begins with T, but lots of singing and fun and finger plays and rhyming and just read, read, read to your child.

- Do you have anything else you wanna add about toddlers?

- No, and preschool is so important, and all of those activities come alive in preschool as well.

And once again, choosing those rich read alouds or reading aloud to your child or finding an audio and having them hear stories beginning, middle, and end, asking them questions, asking them to retell, all important.

- Do you know if the phonics piece and the sounding out, the tapping that Rebecca was talking about, is that being taught in preschools?

- No.

- Okay.

(women laugh) - No.

- No.

- No.

We typically start that in kindergarten.

We do expose students, obviously, to everything that we just discussed, print, and we want them to understand letters.

So like if I'm teaching the letter A, you know, we are gonna make sure that we're using our bodies to help.

So if you can get preschoolers to move around, they're going to be, one, a lot better at paying attention, and, two, it just helps connect everything more to them.

But no, we are not gonna start with tapping and explicit phonics instruction in kindergarten.

- So for preschool- - I mean for preschool, sorry.

- Yes, no, we know where you're going.

So in preschool we're starting with like singing the ABCs, knowing the alphabet, right?

Recognizing all your letters and then also learning the letters in your own name.

Is that a good place for parents- - Names, yeah, learning the letters in your own name, learning the sounds.

You can do that as well.

You just want to make sure that they are just immersed a lot in all things literacy, just reading and singing and playing and even role play different nursery rhymes, and they act them out, and that's a really cool thing for the little ones to do.

My girls were in preschool, and they were in a special needs preschool as typical developing students.

They had strong peers to learn from, and was this?

I'm so sorry, I lost my train of thought.

Preschool or were you asking about two year olds?

- You know, two year olds going into preschool.

The question from the person at home was about toddlers.

- Toddlers, okay.

Like if you're teaching a toddler how to read, right?

You're not gonna teach a toddler how to read, but you're gonna teach a toddler to recognize some letters?

- Yes.

Yeah, you could.

You definitely could in their own name, their first letter in their name, their second, and sometimes that's all they'll know is the letter, and then you can even talk about the sound, too.

- Birth age to six is really all pre-reading, and so that's super important.

I know at OSU, the Crane Center has that Sit Together and Read Program that they work with preschools on on how to look at some books and really bring out the language and the structure of language, and that's been a great program, I know, at OSU as well.

- So you were talking about, you know, making reading fun for preschools, you know, getting them up and everything.

What about a student who is, you know, somewhere in elementary school right now really struggling with reading?

How can you make reading fun?

We had a person who submitted a question in advance, Tresneil, and they wanna know how to make reading fun for their child.

- It's a good question.

We hear it a lot.

And so a lot of teachers that I've observed, even if they're doing an intensive intervention with that child on a phonics piece, let's say they're in 2nd grade and they need to kind of go back to some K and 1 skills, just that enthusiasm and when they know that they can read that sentence that they've had difficulty with over and over again and now they read it to automaticity, it's automatic for them, that's what makes it fun because they can actually read the words, and that's what builds that self confidence piece as well.

- Do you have any suggestion for parents at home about making reading fun?

Because if they're spending all day struggling with reading at school, maybe the last thing they wanna do is come home and have their mom and dad now telling them to sound out all the words.

- A lot of what I'll do is I recommend, I'm very much into the movement, and if I can turn your body into a letter, I will do it.

I was working on the word does with a student the other day, and we physically stood up and made the D with our body and the O and the S and the E and said, you know, "Does!"

And we cheer them, we punch out the sounds.

Anything that engages their bodies, their minds, they will really enjoy that.

I actually was teaching a student about the reading brain and the different parts of the brain, and she made me a 3D brain from a 3D printer, and she brought it in, and we painted the parts of the brain.

So actually teaching her about that, she was excited about it.

She was able to then verbalize what parts of the brain did what, and she was interactive with that.

- And the making reading fun, I can see the getting up and doing all the letters for like a younger elementary school age, but what about if you have a student who's in 4th or 5th grade and they're really struggling with the reading?

Do you have any suggestions on making that fun?

- Encourage.

Encouragement and positivity and constant feedback.

I'm working with a 5th grader right now who we are working on filling in some of those gaps, and she says her favorite part of the day is when she comes to me because we are doing things.

I'm meeting her at her where she is and growing her, and she loves it because she feels success.

So I don't know if it's actually singing and dancing.

You know, that's more for the little ones, but I think feeling that that intrinsic success feeling for her makes it fun, and she wants to come because she loves learning, and so that's kind of what I do.

- And so Tricia, you were through Ohio Department education.

How do we get a reading specialist like Rebecca in every single classroom in who are so enthusiastic?

I mean, this is what we need, right?

We need a reading specialist in every classroom everywhere.

- Yeah, well, what's been great is that, with Ohio's learning standards and some of the other literacy initiatives, really that what we call tier one core instruction, so the classroom teacher has really built his or her reading knowledge base, that capacity.

In the past 10 years, we really have seen that.

So they're learning way more about phonics and sound awareness.

They're learning about how to work with new English language learners.

So I really feel like the classroom teachers have really built their capacity, and it's great when schools do have someone like Rebecca, but all schools have like a reading specialist or a Title I teacher or someone that they can go to, but it's really the classroom teacher that's first.

- Yes.

- So if you have a child who's still struggling with reading, can you talk a little bit about when do you figure out if maybe their problem is something more serious, maybe something like they have dyslexia?

When does that get identified?

Is that something you can know early on if the struggle is something that needs addressed in a different way?

- So similar to what we said earlier about Third Grade Reading Guarantee, schools are giving a screener to see kind of that temperature check, see what students are, changing up instruction for that student if needed, and then they might give another screener.

Sometimes it's called an intervention-based diagnostic to see what the specific areas are that we need to hone in on, and then that repetition, that intensive instruction, we see if that works, you know?

We progress monitor, at least get like six different notations or marks of where they've been in the past six weeks, and from there, the teacher, the principal, and the team of of teachers really can make a decision on what to do next with that particular child.

I'm guessing if someone is identified and has dyslexia, the way you teach them how to read changes.

Is there or different method or is it still the- - Well, we're still doing explicit instruction.

We're doing that with our tier one.

That's our whole group, and then we have students who have tendencies for dyslexia.

We would pull them into a small group, like Tricia said, and we would just do more one on one or small group based of that tier one explicit instruction.

It might need a little bit more hands on, multisensory, but sometimes in a whole group, we'll lose kids.

So if we're using those strategies and we're breaking it down a little bit more specific for that smaller group, you're gonna see a lot more growth.

And all of our teachers are doing that, and that's best practice.

- Say your child has been identified with like ADHD.

Is the small group mentality helpful for that, too, or is there a different way for that?

- Oh, that's helpful, too, but we also try to put in some accommodations.

A student might need just a list of, if they have ADHD, oftentimes, I'll have a list with bullets of things to help them remember, check off that they need to do.

There are a lot of things that teachers will do to help keep their children focused.

Some kids just need to move, and so we have wobble chairs or you know, bouncy chairs, and that movement just helps 'em to be able to focus.

So there are a lot of things that teachers will do to help their children stay focused and on task and learn.

- And if there's a parent watching this right now who's just really worried about their child being behind in reading and they want every day when the child comes home from school, they wanna like work on it, I was reading about how important it is for parents to be patient and purposeful.

So can we talk a little bit more about pacing?

We're not gonna fix a whole year's worth of being behind in reading in three weeks or something like that.

Does that make sense?

What do you think about the pacing of learning to read?

- So let's say it's that 1st grade, for example.

Really important time that scope and sequence, and a student is struggling and they can't get past certain concepts to move on to the next concept and so forth.

I know what I hear from parents is they really don't like a wait and see model.

They want action because your early years are super important in building that foundation.

So we encourage them to talk with the teacher and see what is happening in the classroom, what the teacher is working on in small group, or intensifying in those specific areas, and what are some practices that parent could do at home if they're able to do so?

- Do you wanna add anything about pacing?

- I just agree with Tricia.

(laughs) That's exactly what you need to do.

- Okay.

My son's a kindergartner, so he has a word wall of words, sight words that he needs to know, and then I was like, "Should I be turning those into flashcards?"

Do we do flashcards anymore?

Can you?

- I do use flashcards, but I do a lot of multisensory.

I like to be standing up and, like I explained earlier, moving.

And then it depends on the word.

If it has a phoneme or a sound that they know, you know, sometimes I'll underline that so that, if they're looking at the word what, the W-H, I'll underline it.

They know that part, and I'll put a little heart over the A-T.

If you're in communication with the teacher, which is very, very important, knowing the scope and sequence and knowing when things are being taught, you're going to be able to move right along at the pace that that child needs.

- Yeah, and you mentioned word wall.

A lot of kindergarten teachers use sound walls 'cause sounds are super important, you know?

So a C, a K, a C-K all make the same sound.

So really understanding that.

I've seen teachers have their students have little handheld mirrors in kindergarten so that they are pronouncing the sound correctly.

Remember in the pandemic, a lot of teachers were making videos on how to teach sounds because they were working through a mask.

It's really important to see that mouth piece, the mouth and its movement and what the tongue, you know, touches with the teeth and so forth.

So I've seen that as well, just using mirrors with kindergartners.

- And we have pictures as well of the mouth beside the different sounds and what your mouth looks like when you're saying ih or eh or ah, and there is actually a picture (laughs) of a mouth doing that, and we'll put that beside the sounds.

- I mean, whenever we talked about the pandemic and where, you know, students being behind because of it, I was thinking more of the time that they were at home or they had to learn on Zoom, but I didn't really even think about that continuing with wearing a mask in school and not getting to like use your mouth properly I guess, right?

So that's important with the way your mouth makes all the letters?

Is it a speaking thing and a hearing?

Is it both?

- I think mostly speaking so that, well, but they need to be able to hear the sound as well.

A lot of times, I'll have a child.

I'll say, "Look at me," or I'll hold a mirror up, and I'll do it and then I'll have them do it so they can actually see where to put the tongue, the teeth, all of those things.

And we also, when we're teaching explicitly with phonics, we talk about is it a voice or unvoiced sound?

And so they're learning.

They're becoming more aware of their mouth and the parts that they use to actually make the sounds.

That's a part of our instruction, just becoming more aware of it and don't just assume that they know because they don't.

(laughs) Most of them don't.

- Okay.

I wanted to take just a little bit of time for, you know, any parents who are watching this or, you know, the trusted adult of the child at home.

If they want to try any specific books, specific apps, if you have anything else to recommend.

I think you mentioned a website earlier.

- Yeah, so there's four family guides on readingrockets.org, which it's excellent for teachers, has lots of teacher resources, but it has specific family guides, and talking about some of the activities that Rebecca mentioned as well to do those at home and just real simple audio video and explanations of that.

So that's a really good one as well.

For parents of students with dyslexia, understood.org is also an excellent site for that.

- Understood.org?

Okay.

- Yeah.

- Do you have any other resources?

Do you have a favorite book?

What's your favorite book to teach kids with?

- Yeah.

It depends on the grade level.

(laughs) I love all literature.

I just love everything.

I don't have a specific title in mind.

- Well, what about parents reading to kids at night, you know, before bed?

Should they be reading books that are at the kid grade level or should we be reading above, both?

- We wanna make sure obviously that it's at their grade level, even if they can't read it, decode it themselves.

Hearing that language, that vocabulary, "Magic Treehouse."

My girls loved that when they were younger, and higher level, too, as long as you're there and making, as I spoke earlier, an interactive.

So if you come across a word that a child may not know, you wanna make sure that you're there to explain it to them, but definitely not below their grade level.

- That's why I like for preschool, like I'm thinking about my four-year-old nephew, just rereading the same story over and over again.

They love that, but they gain confidence in that as well.

- And we are down to the last couple of minutes.

Is there anything you want to add out there with, you know, if someone just has a child who's really struggling but you know how important this reading piece is, maybe just like a pep talk, some words of advice, anything else you wanted to add.

- Well, both of us, literacy is our love language.

This is what we do and so forth, but we want all students to really have that strong foundation so that they are confident communicators.

So whatever they wanna do in their life, you know, a reading or a writing hindrance doesn't impede them from taking that hard course or, you know, filling out that tedious application.

We just want them to be confident communicators, and that's why, in elementary, that foundational piece is super important.

- And communicate with your child's teacher.

It's very important.

If you have a concern, don't wait.

That's our life work is to help your child grow and learn.

So please reach out to your child's teacher.

- I couldn't imagine.

I mean, you have a room full of 20-some students.

Teaching them how to read.

That's such a huge thing.

Now, like after having this conversation, I am in awe of kindergarten teachers.

I'm in awe of reading specialists.

That's their job.

That's their passion, right?

- It is their passion.

It is so fun.

It really is.

- And to see, I can imagine whenever the kid gets it and the decoding happens and there's like that light that comes on, yeah.

- Yeah, I've sometimes I've been so excited, I'll be like, "Oh my goodness!"

And they're like, "You scared me."

I'm like, "But I'm so happy you were able to get that word.

You did that you did not give up."

- Oh, that's wonderful.

- That's why as teachers, like especially in the past few years, reading and the brain, learning about that, building our capacity about reading and the brain, what we've learned from that, we wanna definitely use that and transfer that into the classroom.

- Okay, so as teachers are teaching, but then teachers are still learning themselves.

Yes.

- Yeah.

Teachers are always learning.

- We're always learning.

That never stops.

- Right, right.

Well, this has been an Ohio Learns 360 webinar.

Thank you for joining us, and I wanna say thank you to Tricia Merenda from the Ohio Department of Education.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- And also thank you to Rebecca Pitcher, the literacy supervisor from Dayton.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you.

- And please provide your feedback on tonight's topic and to help inform future topics by completing a survey.

The URL is on the screen now, or you can use that QR code, and if you're not able to grab that right now, a link will be emailed in the next 24 hours to anyone who has registered.

And if you take the five minutes to do the survey, you'll be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a $100 gift card.

We'd like you to join us in March for our next topic, which is caring for children's mental health.

Thank you to Ohio Learns 360 and the Ohio Department of Education for this event.

Thank you to Amy Palermo for WOSU classroom for her support and also the television production team at WOSU for making this event possible.

You can watch other webinars in this series and find information about upcoming virtual events, including links to register by visiting our website at ohiolearns360.org.

I'm Amy Juravich.

Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.