If you have a group and one kid actually notices, oh, it's a verb and another kid notices a noun and they start to be like, no.
I'm right.
No.
I'm right.
Okay.
Let's talk it out.
It's it becomes fun.
It becomes engaging.
They actually get to play with language, and it's not boring anymore.
Hey there, and welcome back to the smarter literacy podcast from attend smarter intervention.
Where we simplify effective literacy instruction so that every student gets what they need, and every educator gets to breathe a little easier.
I'm Lindsey.
And I'm Corey, and today we're walking you through the exact structure we use in our tier two and tier three elementary structured literacy lesson.
Ins.
If you ever wondered what a structured literacy lesson really looks like in action, or if you ever stared at a blank lesson plan and thought, where do I even start? This episode is for you.
Let's start at the beginning.
What is structured literacy? That is such a great question.
So structured literacy is an approach to reading instruction that is explicit, systematic, and focused on teaching the foundational literacy skills.
So thinking about skills like phonologies, sound symbol relationships, spelling patterns, word structure, but also vocabulary and comprehension strategies in a clear and intentional way.
I know sometimes when we think about structured literacy, a lot of times we think about the phonics based piece of that, but that vocabulary and comprehension is important as well.
Mhmm.
And it's especially helpful for students who struggle with reading, but really it benefits all learners because it's helping them see how everything connects and why letters and words and sentences do the things that they do.
It's almost like the science behind reading.
Mhmm.
So structured literacy is a research based way of teaching reading that's really intentional.
And essentially what it does is it doesn't assume that students will just pick up skills.
So it's very explicit.
It doesn't assume that they'll just know these things or that they've learned these things in the past, and it teaches the skills step by step.
So, for example, how sounds connect to letters, how words are built, what suffixes will do, how to make sense of what you're reading.
Awesome.
Okay.
So let's walk through each part and talk about what it looks like in practice.
Yeah.
So we break our lessons up into a five part lesson flow.
So the first thing that we do is we have a warm up and skill review, and we always start with this, and I always tell my students, okay, this is gonna be the section where we warm up our brain and get ready for our reading or our writing.
And this would include skills like phonological awareness drill or activity or sound drills.
I know we had an episode a while back about sound drills and spicy sound drills.
And also this might be where we would put in a word reading or available type review.
Sometimes I'll do a game with my students at this point.
And it's usually five, ten minutes.
So it's pretty quick.
It's not something I want to spend a ton of time on.
I almost think about it as more like jumping jacks or something before you get into a sports, uh, activity.
Right? It's not we're not gonna spend our whole practice doing jumping jacks, but this is just going to get us warmed up for what it is that we're ready to do.
And so that's what this part of the lesson is for.
And the goal here is reactivating any prior learning and just, again, getting ourselves warmed up.
Right.
Yes.
And that's perfect.
The jumping jack analogy, because that's exactly what it is, basically.
I do.
I love this warm up with my kids, and usually it does look like the sound drill for me, but even something like sound bingo can be really fun for the kids, where it's just a a quick minute game.
Right? They're they can fill it in, say out the sounds until we get a big bow.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And I think a lot of times too, I will just frame it for students around the literacy processing triangle, and I'll even show them.
This is the part of the brain that we're warming up right now.
And this is the part of the brain that we're warming up right now.
And I think that really helps too because then they can see it as, okay, we're just getting things activated because especially for older students, think it can be, you know, why are we doing this, or why are you asking me if words rhyme, or why are we trying to determine if these words sound the same or different? It's just really about kind of turning on those neural structures that we need and same thing, like we would do jumping jacks.
Or like we would do a drill, or even before doing singing or things like that, you're going to do warm ups for your voice.
And so it's the same thing.
And I think when we can frame it that way, then it's not like, oh, this is a babyish activity, like, no, This is just a warm up.
I know that you can do these things just like I know you can do a jumping jack, but we're still gonna do it anyway.
Especially when you make a routine.
Right? Yeah.
Yep.
Exactly.
So then from there, after we've done the warm up, then we're gonna move into the second part of our last which is going to be our reading skills.
And this is where we focus on our word recognition direct instruction.
So we kind of break up our reading into two parts, and the first part is gonna be that word recognition direct instruction.
So this is where we would be doing a phonogram introduction and then pulling that into decoding.
So, for example, if we have a new concept, maybe that concept is teaching CK, or maybe that concept is teaching t I o n, right, depending on where we're at, that specific phonetic skill, we're gonna teach it in isolation, and then we're gonna help them bring that through to the word level, and then we'll move it into the sentence level, and we'll really start to make sure that they can see that application over time.
And oftentimes here, we're using manipulatives, we're using whiteboards.
We have lessons that have, um, a worksheet component to it, but a lot of times we're still pulling in other pieces here so that they can see it, they can engage with it.
And oftentimes, this is taking fifteen to twenty five minutes to really get into this because this is where that explicit instruction and that first direct instruction is really happening for the students.
Right.
Yeah.
This is kinda like the heart of your instruction, especially if your instruction is focusing on that word recognition piece.
And so you do wanna dedicate that time.
And you can also, like, at, again, kinda add in some games, make it a little bit fun, add those application pieces.
And so just to get the kids thinking and working and practicing with this new skill that you're introducing and explicitly teaching with them.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And this is a place where we're usually doing a lot of highlighting.
And so this is a time where I will say, you know, pick out your favorite color and things like that because again, it's not necessarily fun instruction, but it does need to happen.
And so we're trying to do whatever we can to keep it engaging, but it is the heart of your instruction so that they can really recognize, okay, this is how it comes together.
And a lot of times, at this point, we are looking at reading real words, we're looking at reading nonsense words, And so some of the beauty here is that you can also use that as an opportunity to be building in some vocabulary instruction.
Yes.
So I know there's a lot of question around, do you teach nonsense words? Is it worth that time? We do, and we do it one so that we can see, you know, are the students actually applying that word recognition strategy without relying on vocabulary or orthographic memory.
Mhmm.
But also because that way we can see, are you recognizing that words are nonsense words or not? That kind of gives us an idea of your meta cognitive ability.
Right? Like, are they are they able to recognize that that word should have been rated a one on the vocabulary rating scale? Yep.
So the beautiful thing is is that you can utilize some of your word recognition instruction even to double a little bit as your vocabulary instruction.
Yeah.
I'm just trying to get a little bit of extra bang for that time buck, if you will.
I love that.
That's actually one of my favorite parts too.
It's great.
I mean, and then too, it's an opportunity.
You know, I have a particular student that I'm thinking of that's constantly she loves vocabulary rating scale.
So after she decodes every word, she wants to give it a one, two, three, or four, based on how confident she is with the word.
Right? One being not at all and four being, oh, I could define this word.
And it's a really great opportunity too for us to just build some of that right in there.
For her.
And I just think that's such a great opportunity for groups of students too where you've got mixed needs to be able to to meet multiple needs at once.
So I love that.
Yeah.
Then from there, we move into, uh, it bridges beautifully into the next section, which is our third section of our lesson, and this is more of the language comprehension direct instruction.
So a lot of times at the elementary level, what this looks like is as we make that transition from kind of that word reading, where we were just talking about vocabulary words and isolation, then we can move into sentence reading and syntax.
And this is gonna be a really great opportunity to sort of bridge.
We're still using the phonogram pattern that we were teaching.
So for example, if we were talking about CK, all of our sentences have CK, but now we're really gonna think about what that looks like at the sentence level.
So we'll look at phrasing and, you know, what is the who or what? Did what? You can start to think about that.
And then we can even move into comprehension as well.
So same thing.
We're still using a passage that has that CK in it.
Mhmm.
But then we're moving into comprehension and we can start to think about our three step comprehension process of what are we doing before reading, during reading, after reading, again, this is taking about fifteen to twenty five minutes of our instructional time.
Right.
Right.
And this would be, again, if you had students who were more needed focus and language comprehension, you might spend a little bit more time here really focusing on the vocabulary, the sentence fluency, the reading comprehension, all of that to really make sure are they understanding what they're reading, and they can kind of interact with the passage as well and the sentences as well.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And I think you can make this fun too.
Right? Like, one of the things one of my students many of my students have left, but one of them particularly right now gets so excited for sentence reading because One, what we'll do is we'll break it like I said into who or what, did what, when, where, why, or how.
And when we're doing that, we're color coding each of the pieces, and so we'll all take potentially a marker.
Mhmm.
And one person is responsible for the who or what, another person is responsible for the did what, another person's responsible for the when where why or how.
So this particular student gets very excited about this opportunity, and we'll put that together.
And then if we realize that a sentence doesn't have what we would call that green section, that adverbial phrase or clause, then we can add it in, we can have conversation about what that would look like.
We can practice moving that to the front of the sentence to see how that would sound different.
And then afterward, we will take two minutes to draw one of the sentences that we read.
And it's kind of like a pictionary game where we're all trying to guess what the sentence was that the person drew.
So the beautiful thing about that is that you're helping them visualize the sentence as they're reading They're very excited about getting to draw it.
It's only two minutes long, so it's not taking a ton of your instructional time, and it's a great executive functioning strategy as well.
Yeah.
Because a few things.
One, they have to think about Can I draw this? Like, can I draw this to a way that somebody else is gonna be able to guess what this is? But also, what am I gonna have time to draw in two minutes? Right? Am I visualizing this sentence? Is there anything blocking me from being able to understand this sentence? A word that we should maybe us.
Yeah.
It's a really great opportunity to have a really boring task, like reading a sentence Mhmm.
And then making it feel more fun.
But that's where some of this direct instruction comes in, but it doesn't have to be super dry.
Right.
Right.
I'm I love that.
I'm gonna steal the dictionary.
Activity.
Like, I think I have some students who would really love that.
It's so fun.
Yeah.
And I I mean, I definitely have students right now who love the color coding of the sentences.
And we love they love color coding.
They love reading through it.
They love practicing their sense and sentence fluency.
Then what I've actually done with some of my older students too is taken that strategy and brought it over to the passage level, where we're kinda looking at, okay, who are we talking about? What did they do? And then kind of all that when we are wise.
So we can really start breaking down the passage too, and they can start jotting that down for a note.
And so that we can annotate a little bit easier as well.
And that's helping their comprehension move back to sentence level into the passage level.
And that's so important when you have kids who are really struggling at that language comprehension level piece.
Absolutely.
And it's so great again to be using those strategies talking about that.
But at the elementary level, we're still basing this around a specific phonogram pattern And the great thing about that is that even if you have students who maybe don't necessarily struggle with the word recognition piece, they're still seeing that.
Mhmm.
And or if you have mixed groups where you have a group of the kids that have word recognition difficulty and another group of them have language comp difficulties, but you have to put them together.
Mhmm.
This is a great way to flow through that and be able to be supporting both needs at the same time.
So it's really great.
Absolutely.
So then from there, we move into the fourth part of our lesson, which is our reciprocal writing skills.
So the first piece of the lessons that warm up and review, then we move into the word reading and then the language comp reading, Then the fourth piece, again, is that reciprocal writing skills.
So now we're kind of flipping the coin over, flipping the page over, if you will, to the writing skills.
We start with word recognition.
So, again, this would look like a phonological awareness writing skill drill.
So we're thinking more about segmenting and manipulation.
Those types of skills will be really helpful for writing the auditory drill.
So that would be instead of looking at a letter and telling the sound, we would say what says, and we would want them to be able to produce a c, a k, a c k.
Right? So it's kind of that reciprocal process there.
Then we'll get into review spelling where we review spelling that we've done in the past just to make sure that we and lost all of that.
Mhmm.
And then we'll come into new pattern spelling.
And this usually takes about ten to twenty minutes to get through all of that.
And we just wanna make sure that students are practicing applying basically what we would say in the opposite direction.
So if we think about that literacy, processing triangle again, instead of going from this is what the letters say, to this is what the sounds each of those letters make, to what is the word, we're going from what is the word.
Mhmm.
What are each of the sounds in that word? What are the letters that make those particular sounds? And that's how we're gonna do this word recognition reciprocal writing process.
Right.
Yes.
And again, going back to this is really where they're applying their skills.
This is where you're really kinda seeing are they actually doing the work that I've kinda taught them? That has that explicit instruction kind of worked with them? Like, are they using it? Has it kind of broken through too? It's just like sit in their mind and stay there with them.
And if not, you you know, okay, I need to go back.
We need to practice this a little bit more.
Absolutely.
And it's a higher level skill for sure.
So being able to produce the written work is definitely more challenging.
And so one of the things that we've seen is that in some programs or some approaches, they might treat spelling as a completely separate skill altogether.
So, like, here's our reading program and here's our spelling program and they're not aligned.
And the problem with that is that again, it is two sides to the same coin.
It is just going two different directions for the same neural processes.
And so what spelling is doing is it's reinforcing just like you said, that particular skill.
And so while it is possible that your student's spelling it isn't at the same level as they're reading, that's okay.
And we're also not saying that you have to hold them back just because their spelling isn't at, you know, 90% or better, but it is an opportunity to really practice and really solidify and make sure that that's actually making sense and that they're not just, again, reading from kind of visual memory, which is fine.
We do want them to do that to some extent, but the spelling piece is where it's really at, and it's where you can start to see how are they applying even some of those language skills Yes.
As we move into that next that next component.
Yes.
So the last piece of the lesson or part five would be the reciprocal writing skills for more of the language comprehension needs.
And what we can do here is we can take those spelling words that we've just had them practice and work on, and we can start to sort those out by parts of speech.
So is it, you know, a who or what, right, kind of a noun? Is it a did what? Is it a verb? Or is it a describing word? Is it giving us more information about which one or how something was done? And that's really great because then we can start to be thinking about vocabulary alongside of our telling, and that's where we can start to build our sentences from those particular words.
Yes.
And I will tell you my students have actually really loved this part.
They love playing around with language.
When we're doing the spelling sort, And all of a sudden we come across a word like scratch.
Oh, it's a verb.
Wait.
But it could also be a noun.
It could be a thing.
And I'm like, oh, yeah.
It can.
So what do you wanna do? Wanna put in both columns.
I'm like, okay, let's put in both columns.
Right? That's when they actually get to start playing around with language, looking at multiple meanings, thinking about how would I use this in a sentence? If you have a group and one kid actually notices, oh, it's a verb and another kid notices a noun and they start to be like, no, I'm right.
Okay.
Let's talk it out.
It it becomes fun.
It becomes engaging.
They actually get to play with language, and it's not boring anymore.
Right? Absolutely.
And it's also a beautiful opportunity to say, you're both right.
How awesome is that? But that's so funny because actually even just today.
I had a student and we were talking about the a l l pattern.
So all, and the word was stall.
And I asked, okay, like, what, you know, can you rate what your knowledge is of this word? And she's like, oh yeah, it's a four.
And I was like, okay, you know, is it a thing, or is it something that we do, or is it a describing word? And I knew what was coming up, so I knew that, you know, in the context of this passage, it was going to be that the student was trying not to stall or something.
But she's like, it's a thing.
And I was like, oh, you gave me a four.
You definitely know what this bird is.
It's a thing.
And I was like, tell me more.
And she's like, like, the bathroom stall.
And I was like, oh, yes.
Absolutely.
I hadn't even considered that you were absolutely right.
So I think it is.
I was like, oh, yeah.
Wasn't thinking about that.
It's like a room, it's like a small, yeah, it's just such a great opportunity.
It's fun.
It's fun for us too.
Yeah.
You can see where your kids are going with things that you're like, oh, that was the first thing you thought of.
That's so interesting.
Yeah.
I was like, oh, yeah.
Oh, you're not wrong.
You're not wrong.
That's not where my head went with that, but you are absolutely right.
Yeah.
So each full lesson takes about two hours of total instruction time.
But we know that's not always realistic in one sitting.
Some teachers do the full lesson in a single block.
Others break it into smaller chunks across several days.
It's really about making it work for you.
Absolutely.
And the most important thing is just making sure that you are consistently targeting each of these activities.
So again, thinking about making sure you're consistently hitting a warm up and review, you're consistently hitting your direct instruction for your word recognition, your direct instruction for your language comprehension, and then flipping over and getting that direct instruction for the writing skills.
So it's the same thing for the word recognition and the language comprehension.
So you basically just wanna make sure that if you have a lesson, you're putting your lesson together, that you have each of those five sections, those five components, because that's where you're gonna make sure that you are helping to develop the different neural pathways.
That's what makes sure you have really structured literacy in place, and students love the routine.
They love knowing what to expect, and it makes it easier for us to, because we know what to expect.
And so it's just, okay, great.
Right before students or student groups come in, we know exactly.
Great.
This is what we're gonna do.
We'll work through these five parts and away we go.
Yep.
Absolutely.
And even when we keep it routine, kids can almost think of when they're applying their skills they can almost think of it in that routine step too of how they were taught this.
So it really does make everyone's life easier.
So if we wanna keep this actionable, what is one key takeaway or action item listeners can leave with? Yeah.
Great question.
So if you are planning your instruction, what we would love for you to think about is just answering these three questions.
So, one, what skill am I introducing? So, again, we like to think about this from a phonogram pattern or a syllable type division role.
We like to think about it from a word recognition lens.
However, then the question becomes, how will I teach it across those five lesson parts? So if I have, for example, c k or a l l, what am I doing to make sure I've hit those five lesson parts? And then we also want you to think about, you know, when am I gonna be checking for understanding throughout the lesson? So this is an opportunity for that progress monitoring that doesn't necessarily have to be separate outside of your lesson.
You can just see, right, as your direct teaching.
Okay.
How many words did they read correctly after I gave that direct and explicit instruction? Did they read four out of five words that I gave them? And that's a great opportunity to be taking some data.
So you just wanna think about if I put my lesson plan together, where potentially are there some opportunities for me to be pulling some of that data? And I think another thing that you can do just as a little bonus tip here is set a timer during one lesson that you are delivering and see where most of your time is going.
This can really help you fine tune your pacing without pressure.
So you're not necessarily saying it has to look like this or it has to look like that, but I think when I started doing this, I started realizing, oh, I'm spending longer with that than I had anticipated.
And so I think if you can start to kinda set a timer for, okay, we're really gonna think about that warm up not taking more than ten minutes of an hour long lesson.
Right? And so really starting to think about it from that perspective.
Awesome.
So next time, we are shifting gears and heading into secondary, which I am so excited about.
And we will walk you through what structured literacy looks like for older students who still need support with decoding, fluency, and comprehension.
Oh my gosh.
Yes.
We definitely need to have more of that conversation.
It feels like we don't have enough of that.
But until then, remember that a strong lesson structure is not meant to box you in.
It's really meant to give you the freedom to teach with chin.
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