TRT Podcast #83: It’s all about taking gradual steps
Lindsay was a fierce balanced literacy advocate … until everything she knew didn’t help her son learn to read. You’ll love hearing how Lindsay educated herself and began tutoring her son, who has severe dyslexia. He’s now a successful, avid reader!
Full episode transcript
Find Lindsay here
- The Science of Reading: First Steps (blog post)
- Free PD for the Science of Reading
- Literacy Talks podcast
Lindsay’s recommends:
- The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading, by Chris Such
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Anna Geiger
Thank you for your thoughts, Priscilla! Interestingly there’s a lot of debate right now in the science of reading community about the advanced phonemic awareness that Kilpatrick promotes (see this article, which has given me a lot to think about: https://www.readingrockets.org/blogs/shanahan-literacy/rip-advanced-phonemic-awareness). As far as sharing why phonemic awareness is important, you can check out the National Reading Panel’s report and look at their summary report for phonemic awareness (free online), as well as this very helpful article from Timothy Shanahan: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED489535.pdf
Priscilla Flynn
I enjoyed listening to your podcast with Lindsay. Your preparation for and ability to interview produced a podcast (like the others) where the guest was able to articulate information with sincerity and ease.
The link for Lindsay’s free PD does not work. I also tried to access it from her blogpost and it showed an error.
When looking further I read an article where she states, “Many educators think of phonemic awareness as a “kindergarten skill,” but it goes much beyond that. David Kilpatrick states that phonemic awareness should be explicitly taught to ALL students until at least the second grade, and then beyond for those who haven’t mastered it yet. Older, struggling readers almost always have weaknesses in this area that were never addressed. And because the most common source of reading difficulties is phonemic awareness, every teacher needs to make this a priority. Teach it to the whole class through 2nd grade, and in small groups for those who need it in all other grades. A student is never too old to learn this skill and studies show that as phonemic awareness improves, reading ability improves as well.” For the first time in over twenty five years I noticed a severe decline in phonemic awareness in this year’s incoming kindergartners and needed to recalibrate what I did to meet these needs. (I suspect this can be attributed to the disruption of the last few years). I am interested in finding how to best help our first and second grade teachers understand the need for intentional instruction in this area and how to go about it. Thank you.