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teaching reading

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Research to the Classroom - Dyad Reading Part 3 - Teacher Talk



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00:00:00
INTRODUCTION

Jocelyn: Hey Kirby, how are you going?

Kirby: Good. Thank you. How are you?

Jocelyn: I'm excellent now that you're here. It's so fantastic to have you here for our very first teacher talk episode of the podcast. Kirby, why don't you share with our listeners who you are, where you teach, what you do, how long you've been teaching for and all the things?

Kirby: Sure. So my name's Kirby. This will be my 12th year of teaching. I worked out earlier, wh…

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Research to the Classroom - Dyad Reading Part 2



 

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Transcript

00:00:00
Introduction
Hi there, and welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast recorded here in Pataway Lutruwita or Burnie, Tasmania, the home of the Palawa people. I'm so lucky to live and work here in this beautiful place and also to bring you this week's podcast, which is the second episode in our current Research to the Classroom series about assisted reading. Our Research to the Classroom series is in three parts: part one, where we share a publ…

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Research to the Classroom - Dyad Reading - Part 1




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00:00:00
Introduction
Hi there. Welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast. It's Jocelyn here, and I am so pleased to welcome you this week because we have a brand new series for you. One of the things I remember so vividly is being in school as a teacher and then leader, really wanting to keep up with readings and research and just not having the bandwidth to be able to do it. So we've started a brand new series for you called Research to the Classroom. It's a se…

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Your Semester 2 Success Plan


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00:00:00
Introduction
Hi there. Welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast. It's Jocelyn here bringing you this episode from Tasmania, the home of the Palawa people. If you are a teacher in Australia or New Zealand, it's the start of Semester 2, 2023, and it's time to have a think about what you are hoping to accomplish over the rest of the year. If you're listening from the Northern Hemisphere, you are heading towards a new school year, this post will be just as help…

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Should we be using commercial programs to teach reading?





When it comes to making a move to structured literacy, few topics generate discussion like commercial programs. 

In our 2022 Teach Voice in Literacy Instruction Survey, a whopping 96.5% of teachers said that they wanted a program to guide them step by step through reading instruction
 
HOWEVER

23% of teachers said that they had to create or purchase their own phonics program because their school didn't have one and 35% said that they create some aspect of a…

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confusing

The Complicated Simplicity of the Sweet Spot

We all came through our university training hearing about Vygotsky’s 1978 idea of ‘Zone of Proximal Development’. That zone between what the child can do on their own and what they can’t do.  It’s the spot where they can do something with help. The ‘sweet spot’ for learning, you could say.

These days we have the lens of Cognitive Load Theory to view this through.  Sweller’s theory outlines intrinsic load as the actual thing we want children to learn. We can optimise intrinsic load by comparing …

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Simple Steps for Big Change


It is the school holidays and I know that it is very likely you have half of your brain occupied by what you’ll be doing next term to create great learning opportunities for your students.  You might have big plans that you are excited about, or you might have big wishes that you know you can’t implement because your school still follows a balanced literacy approach.  Whether you are in the first or second situation, I want you to know that while our goal is to have a fully evidence aligned cl…

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Phonics Without the Frou Frou

We all know that phonics is one of the 6 essential components of reading instruction and, in and of itself, is not sufficient to help children become proficient readers.  It is, however, critical that we get the teaching of phonics, starting with phoneme grapheme correspondence, right so that children have a firm foundation on which to base their reading skill development.

The title of today’s post gives away where my head has been this past week! A slew of Facebook posts and shared links revea…

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no 3 cueing

No More Three Cueing! What's Next?

There has been a lot of talk lately about the very encouraging announcement that Arkansas in the United States has banned teach children the three cueing method in reading instruction.  This means that teachers will need to find an alternative to teaching children to do any of the following:

  • Look at the first letter, look at the picture and think about what makes sense
  • Skip the word, read on and then come back after you think about what makes sense
  • Trying a word that makes sense
  • Using …

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decodables

Using Decodable Texts to Meet Student Needs



We have all heard about decodable texts and the need to ditch 3 cueing.  It is now well established that children should only be given material to read in the early stage of learning to read that contains graphemes and high frequency words they have been taught and that 'sounding out' is the only strategy we should be teaching when children are lifting the words from the page.  However, even this switch to decodable texts does not mean that one size fits all. 

Before I talk about stud…

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