# data[].attributes.headline
Jocelyn Seamer: What goes into a great text based unit?

# data[].attributes.subject
Jocelyn Seamer: What goes into a great text based unit?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Subscribe to the Podcast 00:00:00
Introduction
Hi there. It’s terrific to welcome you back to the Structured Literacy Podcast. I know that you h…

# data[].attributes.headline
Maria Dove and Andrea Honigsfeld: ESL Co-Teaching Models

# data[].attributes.subject
Maria Dove and Andrea Honigsfeld: ESL Co-Teaching Models

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Blast from the Past: Re-issued March 22, 2021 and August 3, 2017. First published June 18, 2012; Of all of my blog entries, this one has been read, cited, and distributed most often. Obviously a lot of people have found it to be useful, so I have reposted it for those who might not have seen it before. However, I had another reason this time. These days the term "close reading" is increasingly being used by teachers as a synonym for reading comprehension. Teaching reading comprehension and teaching close reading overlap in important ways but they definitely are not the same thing. No, close reading is not the new cool name for reading comprehension. Check this entry out to find out what close reading is really about. Next week I'll post a new entry -- this one also on close reading (and whether it is supported by research).
The Common Core State Standards are encouraging teachers to engage students in close reading. Much of the focus of discussions of close reading have emphasized what teachers should not do (in terms of pre-reading, or types of questions). I am being asked with increasing frequency what close reading is.

Close reading requires a substantial emphasis on readers figuring out a high-quality text. This "figuring out" is accomplished primarily by reading and discussing the text (as opposed to being told about the text by a teacher or being informed about it through some textbook commentary). Because challenging texts do not give up their meanings easily, it is essential that readers re-read such texts (not all texts are worth close reading). A first reading is about figuring out what a text says. It is purely an issue of reading comprehension. Thus, if someone is reading a story, he/should be able to retell the plot; if someone is reading a science chapter, he/she should be able to answer questions about the key ideas and details of the text.

However, close reading requires that one go further than this. A second reading would, thus, focus on figuring out how this text worked. How did the author organize it? What literary devices were used and how effective were they? What was the quality of the evidence? If data were presented, how was that done? Why did the author choose this word or that word? Was the meaning of a key term consistent or did it change as one progressed through the text? This second reading might be a total re-reading or a partial and targeted re-reading of key portions, but it would not be aimed at just determining what the text said (that would have already been accomplished by this point).

Finally, with the information gleaned from the first two readings, a reader is ready to carry out a third reading-going even deeper. What does this text mean? What was the author's point? What does it have to say to me about my life or my world? How do I evaluate the quality of this work-aesthetically, substantively? How does this text connect to other texts I know? By waiting until we have a deep understanding of a text - of what it says and how it works-we are then in the right position intellectually and ethically to critically evaluate (valuing) a text and for connecting its ideas and approach with other texts.

Thus, close reading is an intensive analysis of a text in order to come to terms with what it says, how it says it, and what it means. In one sense I agree with those who say that close reading is about more than comprehension or about something different than comprehension since it takes one beyond just figuring out an author's stated and implied message. On the other hand, many definitions of reading comprehension include more than just determining a stated and implied message; such definitions include the full range of Bloom's taxonomy in one's thinking about and use of a text. If one subscribes to such definitions of comprehension, then close reading is just a description of a process one uses to arrive at such comprehension.
Should I give the students a preview of a text? No, you probably should not do this At least not in the ways that we often do in classrooms--doing thorough picture walks, guiding the kids' steps through the text, pointing key things out to them and so on. But it is not unreasonable to have students do their own previews, allowing them to get the lay of the land prior to reading if they want to. Is it okay to set a purpose for student reading?
I think with this brief description of the essentials of close reading (e.g., intense emphasis on text, figuring out the text by thinking about the words and ideas in the text, minimization of external explanations, multiple and dynamic rereading, multiple purposes that focus on what a text says, how it says it, and what it means or what its value is), teachers can start to think clearly about a number of issues in close reading.
Does close reading require that every text is re-read?
Yes, it is very reasonable to give students a purpose for reading (read to find out the differences between lions and tigers, or read to find out how this character deals with hard choices). But these purposes should not reveal a lot of information about the text that the students can find out by reading the text. Of course, if you are reading a text multiple times, each time for a different purpose, you might provide a lot more information on later readings. (This text used a lot of metaphorical language to describe how the characters felt, let's re-read those sections and discuss what the author accomplished by doing it that way.)
What if I am unsure whether to discuss prior knowledge before reading a text?
Yes, it really does, but that doesn't mean that every text should be given a close reading. Some texts should still be read only once; that is all they would be worth.

If you think there is key information that students need to know before they read the text (something necessary for making sense of the text that isn't stated in the text), by all means, tell it. If there is no pre-information necessary, then don't make such a presentation or discussion. If you are uncertain, then let the kids have a chance to make sense of it. If it goes well, fine. If not, then add the information to the second reading. (I was just looking at an article on forest fires. "It is only partly true that 'only you' can prevent forest fires." That is a cute beginning, but I'm not sure all of the second-graders will recognize that it is referring to a Smokey the Bear line from a once-common public service announcement. I might want to clarify the source of that before students dig in. But if I didn't do that, I would definitely ask a question about this sentence and would tell that info during the discussion. Sometimes I will anticipate and tell, but whether I do or not, I can always clarify it later in the discussion.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What is Close Reading? | Shanahan on Literacy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Close reading requires a substantial emphasis on readers figuring out a high-quality text. This “figuring out” is accomplished primarily by reading and discussing the text (as opposed to being told about the text by a teacher or being informed about it through some textbook commentary).

# data[].attributes.headline
TRANSLANGUAGING: A CUNY-NYSIEB GUIDE FOR EDUCATORS

# data[].attributes.subject
TRANSLANGUAGING: A CUNY-NYSIEB GUIDE FOR EDUCATORS

# data[].attributes.headline
Know Better, Do Better: “Learning to read is a social experience”

# data[].attributes.subject
Know Better, Do Better: “Learning to read is a social experience”

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ep. 4, Know Better, Do Better: “Learning to read is a social experience” - Knowledge Matters Campaign

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
October 29, 2024 - The Knowledge Matters Campaign

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fluency; Key to Comprehension with Dr. Jan Hasbrouck

# data[].attributes.headline
Text Set Project: Building Knowledge and Vocabulary

# data[].attributes.subject
Text Set Project: Building Knowledge and Vocabulary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
To the Classroom Episode 6: Melanie Kuhn (transcript) | Jennifer Serravallo

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Jennifer Serravallo interviews Dr. Melanie Kuhn, researcher and expert in fluency. We’ll talk about what fluency is, how to best assess and teach it, and ways to differentiate instruction in K-5 classrooms. Later, I’m joined by my colleagues Gina Dignon, Macie Kerbs, Lainie Powell, and Lea Mercantin

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On a scale of 1-10, how good are you at comprehending what people say to you?

It's a bit of a silly question, isn't it? Whether or not we comprehend what we are told is dependent on our grasp of the individual words being used, the concepts to which they relate and how these interact to convey meaning. Talk to me about the first nine seasons of The Simpsons using familiar words and I'll comprehend pretty well. Talk to me about your favourite "anguilliform" Pokemon character and I'll probably stare at you blankly. Yes, there are some basic capacities that underpin our ability to understand what people say aloud, such as our hearing and our working memory capacity. But - on the assumption that these things aren't an impediment - our ability to comprehend what we are told is dependent on what we know about the subject at hand and the words being used to describe it. In other words, there is no generic listening comprehension ability. There is instead a vast network of understanding that determines the extent to which we can construct meaning from the words we hear. Trying to determine - or, heaven forbid, quantify - a person's ability to comprehend what they are told would rely on some way of measuring their grasp of all there is to know about the world and the language used to describe it. How do you measure a person's entire understanding of their world and their language? How do you effectively sample a domain this extensive? Answer: you can't.

And this brings me on to reading comprehension. Our ability to comprehend what we read is reliant on much the same network of understanding that is required for listening comprehension. Let's assume that we can recognise the words on a page fluently enough to free up the cognitive resources necessary for comprehension. Under these circumstances, whether or not we comprehend what we read is dependent on our grasp of the individual words being used, the concepts to which they relate and how these interact to convey meaning. Just as with listening comprehension, this is a domain so vast as to rule out valid assessment. To be clear, what I'm suggesting is that - beyond the development of relatively fluent word recognition* - our ability to comprehend what we read is based on everything we know about our world and our language, alongside an additional layer of knowledge related to written text conventions (e.g. punctuation, sub-headings, italics, etc). How do you measure a person's entire understanding of their world, their language and the conventions of written texts? Answer: you can't.

So, we've established that trying to measure reading comprehension is a non-starter.** From this, we can assume that the results from reading comprehension assessments need to be interpreted very cautiously, especially on the level of the individual pupil.

And this is where this blogpost would end if reading comprehension assessment hadn't warped the teaching of reading. But it has. A lot. For the sake of assessment, teachers have been incentivised to see reading comprehension as a generic skill, or, more precisely, a small set of generic skills. If this perspective were a canvas, it would look something like this:

Here is reading comprehension ability interpreted as a small collection of generic skills, things like retrieval, prediction and summarising. Reading comprehension assessments tend to divide the questions they use into a few categories such as these. Countless teachers and school leaders have thus made the understandable leap that teaching reading comprehension is the process of building up each of these generic comprehension skills. They attempt to add another broad-brushstroke layer to a pupil's prediction skill as a means of filling up the canvas. This conveniently allows for the creation of medium-term plans that state that a given class is working on prediction or inference or some other generic skill. It also allows schools to make lists related to those skills that can be ticked off as children develop. If we're going to gather evidence of a pupil's reading comprehension development, then what we presumably need is a small set of statements that correspond to a relatively small set of generic skills. This interpretation of reading comprehension achieves that.

The problem, of course, is that this interpretation is completely bogus. It is based on a view of reading comprehension that is palpably false. Yes, when we comprehend what we read, we tend to be able to retrieve information, to make predictions, to summarise what we have read, etc, and doing this stuff while we read is a useful set of habits that keeps us awake to what we are doing.*** But this is an unhelpful way to visualise our ability to comprehend what we read. I'd argue that this is better:

Forget for a moment the exact scene being portrayed, and consider the means of portraying it. Here reading comprehension ability is interpreted as a vast interacting network of understanding. It is not built up through broad brushstrokes, but through the painstaking accumulation of knowledge about words, texts and the wider world to which they relate. The natural consequence of such an interpretation is that the teaching of reading comprehension must prioritise the guided exploration of text, involving lots of reading and lots of rich discussion. Retrieval, prediction, summarising, etc will naturally form a part of this, but developing these habits is not the central goal of reading comprehension lessons. The central goal of reading comprehension lessons is to understand the specific text being read and the world to which it relates through exploration of the text's use of language. Everything else is secondary.

However, this interpretation leaves us with some problems. I've lost count of the number of school leaders and teachers who - despite their instinctive enthusiasm for this content-focused conception of reading comprehension - have asked the same two questions:

1. "How would we evidence this?"

2. "What would this look like in terms of our long-term planning?"

I will address these two questions in turn:

The answer to (1) is simple: Don't bother.

I'm serious. Just don't bother. Ofsted have made it abundantly clear that they don't want teachers gathering evidence for its own sake. If your method of assessment requires you to pretend that reading comprehension is something that it clearly is not, then it's time to dump that method of assessment. Think instead about how fluently your children read and how much they know about the English language and the wider world. The former can be assessed by hearing children read aloud and by undertaking quick fluency assessments; the latter, however, is not accessible via reference to simple rubrics. Standardised reading assessments may give a very rough idea, but they are not to be relied upon as precise measures of individual progress for all the reasons explained above. It's time to accept that there are some things that we can measure and other things that we cannot and to change our assessment decisions accordingly.

The answer to (2) is a little more difficult. Think back to the canvas above. To build up a picture like that, many thousands of dots are added across the breadth of the canvas, each chosen partly based on its relationship to the other dots on the canvas. In a content-focused view of teaching reading comprehension, our planning must focus on the content being read - the characters, the themes, the text features, the aspects of the world being described, etc. And it must do so in relation to the rest of that which has been, and will be, added to the canvas. In short, stop focusing on how non-existent generic comprehension skills will be taught. Instead focus on the texts themselves - not least their variety and their relationship to the rest of the curriculum**** - and on how you will ensure that pupils learn lots about them.

A content-focused approach to the teaching of reading comprehension aligns with a more accurate view of reading comprehension. It allows teachers to do away with pointless, time-consuming forms of assessment. It encourages school leaders to re-imagine their reading curriculum primarily in terms of the texts to be shared. Most of all, it offers our pupils a more authentic, enriching and effective experience of reading.

So, what's stopping us from teaching reading comprehension really well? Absolutely nothing.

If you'd like to find out more about teaching reading, please consider my book, The Art and Science of Teaching Primary Reading: link

All royalties will be going to the Malaria Consortium, a Give-Well-recommended charity.

* Fluent word recognition is also dependent on our broader language comprehension alongside our knowledge of phoneme-grapheme relationships, phonemic skills, etc.

** The Teachwell blog has an excellent series on this idea: http://www.teach-well.com/reforming-the-key-stage-2-reading-sat-why-its-needed-and-possible/

*** There is lots of research into comprehension strategies. This blog is a good place to start if you want to know more: https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/comprehension-skills-or-strategies-is-there-a-difference-and-does-it-matter#sthash.ZC5WlzWX.dpbs

**** This does not mean that every text has to directly relate to something else in your wider curriculum. It might even be the case that texts are chosen precisely because of how they supplement the curriculum. (E.g. If a primary history curriculum doesn't include a study of a South American civilisation, a non-fiction text relating to the Maya civilisation might be an apt choice to add breadth to the pupils' understanding of the challenging - and often controversial - concept of civilisation.)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What's stopping us from teaching reading comprehension really well?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On a scale of 1-10, how good are you at comprehending what people say to you? It's a bit of a silly question, isn't it? Whether or not we comprehend what we are told is dependent on our grasp of the individual words being used, the concepts to which they relate and how these interact...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tim Rasinski: To the Classroom Episode 20 - Jennifer Serravallo Author & Consulting

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Jennifer Serravallo interviews Dr. Tim Rasinski about fluency instruction, and using both artful and science-based approaches to instruction.

# data[].attributes.headline
Judith Hochman: Writing the way to better reading

# data[].attributes.subject
Judith Hochman: Writing the way to better reading

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
S9 E11: Writing the way to better reading, with Judith Hochman, Ed.D.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tập podcast · Science of Reading: The Podcast · 26/02/2025 · 40ph

# data[].attributes.headline
Maria Dove & Andrea Honigsfeld: Co-Teaching for English Learners Webinar

# data[].attributes.subject
Maria Dove & Andrea Honigsfeld: Co-Teaching for English Learners Webinar

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Maria Dove & Andrea Honigsfeld: Co-Teaching for English Learners Webinar

# data[].attributes.headline
Comprehension Skills or Strategies | Shanahan on Literacy

# data[].attributes.subject
Comprehension Skills or Strategies | Shanahan on Literacy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Comprehension Skills or Strategies | Shanahan on Literacy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These days, the core reading programs do pretty much the same thing with the educational standards, with each standard being translated into a question type in lessons and assessments.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Copy of Grades 3-5 TWR Sample Pacing Guides.docx

# data[].attributes.headline
Jocelyn Seamer: Simple Levers to Pull to Increase Your Impact

# data[].attributes.subject
Jocelyn Seamer: Simple Levers to Pull to Increase Your Impact

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Well, hello there and welcome to this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast, recorded here in Tasmania, the lands of the Palawa people. I'm Jocelyn, and welcome, welcome, welcome.

Once you've implemented your phonics program, established your partner reading routines, sorted out your spelling instruction in Years 3-6, and found a source for quality text-based units, it would be forgivable to think that the job of school improvement is done. I'm sorry to tell you that it's not.

Taking the next critical steps to move your practice from good to really great is not a matter of new shiny things, it's not a matter of getting new programs or doing more PL on its own, but it's a matter of increasing the impact we are having in our literacy blocks.

In today's episode, I'd like to share five ways that you can increase the impact on student outcomes in your classroom. Now, this is not an exhaustive list, but it will give you a starting point to level things up in instruction.

Lever 1: Increase Student Responses and Engineer Early Engagements

The first lever that you can pull is to increase the number of student responses in lessons and engineer your first response to be within the first 30 seconds of the lesson. This can be as simple as an "I say, you say" routine, where the students repeat what you say and then share that key vocabulary with a partner. But what it does is activates the alerting system, which is a component of attention that signals our brain that it's time to attend, it's time to pay attention now.

We don't just want students giving more responses though, we want to increase the number of correct responses. Archer and Hughes, in their text "Explicit Instruction," emphasise that high success rates are crucial for learning. And we see this reflected in Roseshine's Principles. So managing this well is a must.

When we think about Stanislas Dehaene's four pillars of learning, attention is the very first pillar. Without directing student attention to what we want them to learn, the other pillars simply cannot function effectively. That quick "I say, you say" at the start of your lesson isn't just a nice warm-up, it's a neurologically informed practice that primes the brain for learning.

And we don't just want those responses to be at the start of a lesson, we want them to be all through the lesson. So remember the I do part of your lesson is not a 25-minute lecture, it is the introduction of the lesson and students need to be involved in some way right from the start.

Lever 2: Manage Your Response Ratio Strategically

Closely related to increasing the number of responses students have to provide is managing the ratio of types of responses. Simple repetition to focus attention, short responses to check for understanding, and elaborative responses are all important. The authors of "Powerful Teaching" tell us that elaborative responses help students make connections and deepen understanding, but they require more cognitive load than simple repetition.

Lever 3: Transform Your Daily Review

And in vocabulary, instead of just the recognition tasks of vocabulary, ask them to provide a meaning or to answer questions. Such as the question types thar are outlind in Bringing Words to Life.

So you could introduce a big box of questions instead of, or to complement, your existing daily review PowerPoints. I have a whole Research to the Classroom series about this very topic, which explores how retrieval practices strengthen memory consolidation and make knowledge more accessible for future learning.

The research on this is compelling. The testing effect shows us that the act of retrieving information from memory strengthens those neural pathways much more effectively than simply reviewing the same information repeatedly. When we ask students to recall rather than recognise, we're building robust, long-term memories.

Lever 4: Implement Personalised Practice Opportunities

This can take the form of a simple manila folder with materials inside that align exactly with what your students need. This is most powerful for phonics and early morphology work. Resource Room members have access to printables and a mastermind training about using this effectively.

It's crucial that this is based on real-time data, not general, same-same practice for the whole class. Personalised practice is about establishing a tailored approach to consolidation. Remember what we know about cognitive load theory: students can only process so much new information at once, and what's new varies dramatically from student to student.

As I outline in my book, "Reading Success in the Early Primary Years," meeting students where they're up to is fundamental in a structured literacy approach. Some students might need additional practice with basic code correspondences while others are ready for complex code patterns. Personalised practice ensures that every minute of practice time is targeted and effective.

Lever 5: Encourage Connection Building

Encourage your students to be connection builders. Part of schema making is making connections between what we are learning now and what we already know. So, model making these connections and actively encourage students to do the same.

When you're asking students to make those personal connections, just be a little careful in how you do that, though, because you don't want to alienate some students from the lesson. So Hollingsworth and Ybarra's universal scenario is a great way to do this. Ask the question on something that you know that everyone can connect to. Thinking about morphology, when teaching the morpheme 'un-' or UN, you might ask students to connect it to other ' un-' words they've learned, or to think about times they've undone something in their own lives, such as, "I've undone my shoes" or "I've undone my bag". When exploring character motivations in a text-based unit, you might ask them to connect the character's feelings to emotions they explored in a previous story.

This isn't just about engagement, though it certainly helps with that. When students actively make connections, they're building and connecting the robust schema that supports both comprehension and retention. They're doing the cognitive work that transforms isolated facts into interconnected networks of knowledge.

Bringing It All Together

These five levers aren't revolutionary new practices: they're refinements of what you've already been doing. They're about being more intentional, more strategic, and more responsive to what we know about how learning actually works.

The beauty of these approaches is that they don't require you to throw out everything you've worked so hard to establish. Instead, they build on your solid foundation of structured literacy practices to create even greater impact for your students.

Remember, good teaching is often about the accumulation of small, intentional decisions and actions rather than dramatic overhauls. These five levers give you concrete ways to increase your impact without overwhelming yourself or your students.

As you consider which lever to pull first, think about your current context and your students' needs. You might find that one resonates more strongly with where you are in your teaching journey right now, and that's ideal. Start there, build confidence, and then layer in the others as it makes sense.

Your students are fortunate to have teachers who are committed to continuous improvement. Every time you refine your practice based on evidence about how children learn, you're making a difference that will ripple all through all their future learning.

Until next time, happy teaching, everyone.
References:
Archer, A., & Hughes, C. (2011). Explicit instruction: Effective and efficient teaching. Guilford Press.

Dehaene, S. (2021). How we learn: Why brains learn better than any machine...for now. Penguin Books.

Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249-255.

Seamer, J. (2023). Reading success in the early primary years: A teacher's guide to implementing systematic instruction. Routledge.

Show Notes:
Research to the Classroom: Daily Review - Part 1 - The Research Research to the Classroom: Daily Review - Part 2 - Teaching Research to the Classroom: Daily Review Part 3 - Teacher Talk
Looking to increase your impact on student learning? Join us inside The Resource Room!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
S6 E2 - Simple Levers to Pull to Increase Your Impact

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Subscribe to the Podcast Well, hello there and welcome to this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast, recorded here in Tasmania, the lands ...

# data[].attributes.headline
Jocelyn Seamer: Connecting Reading and Writing Episode 1

# data[].attributes.subject
Jocelyn Seamer: Connecting Reading and Writing Episode 1

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Hello there, welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast. My name is Jocelyn and I'm really pleased to be bringing you the first episode of our new Research to the Classroom series. I'm recording this episode on the lands of the Palawa people of Tasmania.

Research to the Classroom is about bridging the gap between research and practice. In each series, we explore a key topic over three connected episodes. First, we unpack the research in an accessible way, then we provide practical guidance for taking action in your classroom, and finally, we chat with a practicing teacher or leader about their real world experience of implementing these ideas. Today we're diving into a topic that I think has enormous potential to transform literacy instruction, and that is the integration of reading and writing for stronger learning outcomes. If you've been following the suggestions of evidence-informed practice, this idea of connecting reading and writing may not be new to you, but what I would like to do is to unpack it a little bit more so we understand the why.

Before we jump into the research, let's reflect on traditional approaches to literacy instruction.

In the earlier grades, levelled texts were used in group rotations for reading groups and, again, comprehension strategies were often the focus. Writing instruction commonly followed a workshop model, a brief mini-lesson, independent writing with teacher conferences and then sharing time. Though labelled as explicit teaching, these 10-minute mini-lesson demonstrations that are then followed by independent practice fall far short of what we now understand explicit instruction to be.

Now, both approaches that I've described, or all of them, were founded on the assumption that exposure to quality text and adequate practice time would naturally develop students into skilled writers, but research in this space has shown this assumption is inadequate for meeting all of students' needs.

So let's explore what research tells us about how reading and writing are connected.

In their comprehensive review, Fitzgerald and Shanahan in 2000 summarised work on reading-writing relationships and three views or approaches: shared knowledge, a functional view and rhetorical relationships. The shared knowledge approach, which has received the most research attention, indicates that reading and writing are related because they draw on the same underlying knowledge and cognitive systems. We're not saying that reading and writing are the same thing, but they are definitely related.

Fitzgerald and Shanahan identified four categories of knowledge that we use when reading and writing.

Kim's model is represented as a structure with a foundation with two pillars supporting a roof of higher level literacy skills. The foundation of the structure consists of language, foundational literacy skills and cognitive skills like working, memory and executive functioning. The two pillars represent, on the left-hand side, word-level literacy, so reading and spelling, and on the right-hand side, discourse-level oral language, which is, in written terms would call that text-level. So this is about conversation, how do we have a discussion and a dialogue with other people? At the very top is the discourse-level literacy, so the roof is the reading comprehension and the written composition.

Four ideas come from Kim's model.

So I'll just run through those four points briefly again. Hierarchical structure, where we build from simple to complex, the interactive nature of reading and writing, therefore, we have co-occurring difficulties very often with students who struggle, and then the relationships between all of these things changing as students develop in skills and knowledge and as their own development happens in terms of their cognitive thinking.

Kim's research found that the same language and cognitive skills that predict listening comprehension also predict reading comprehension. That's not new for us from the Simple View of Reading, so this is affirming what the Simple View of Reading found, suggesting these skills serve similar functions across modes.

Let's think about a different side of research now, and that is strategic processing. In 2011, Anderson and Briggs took a different but complementary perspective on this issue of connecting reading and writing, and they focused on the reciprocal cognitive operations or strategies that readers and writers use. They emphasised that the cognitive processes used in reading are identical to those involved in writing, so the strategies or strategic operations they identified were these...

These strategic operations draw on the same sources of information, which are meaning. In reading, we use meaning to understand text and in writing, we compose to convey meaning. We also have structure, or syntax, so in reading we use structure to group words together, and in writing, we draw on our knowledge of how language sounds and construct sentences that make sense. And then we've got that phonics information. So we use letter-sound patterns to decode, and in writing, we use that same knowledge to encode.

Their research suggests that teaching children to make connections between these strategic processes, as in reading and writing, accelerates learning, particularly for struggling readers. We also have shared knowledge that spans different developmental stages. We heard about this in the Interactive Dynamic Literacy Model from Young-Suk Sook Kim from 2020.

Now let's hear about this same idea from Fitzgerald and Shanahan from 2000. Their research revealed that the nature of reading-writing relationships change over time, and they identified six developmental stages, each with its own critical markers of knowledge that readers and writers use.

Now we continue to build on our reading capacity, but we do it differently, both for reading and writing in Stage four is reading and writing for learning, and we've heard this before we learn to read and then we read to learn. grades four to eight, because the focus here is not on the nuts and bolts foundational skills, but rather on vocabulary, discourse, level comprehension, so that's comprehending of a whole text and comprehending what other people say, and the building of subject-specific knowledge to be used for both reading and writing.

This developmental perspective helps explain why the relationships between reading and writing skills differ at different grade levels. And it helps our team to understand why they're doing what they're doing in the early years as opposed to what they're doing in grades five and six. For example, correlations between word reading and spelling are stronger than those between reading comprehension and written comprehension, likely because higher level skills draw on a wider array of knowledge and abilities. So we know that building spelling proficiency improves reading dramatically, and so when we're talking about the earlier grades, the result of that instruction is that we're going to have a greater outcome between the word level reading and spelling and a greater synthesis. But as students get older there's the possibility that those skills and those differing levels of achievement tend to widen. And I think we see this in our schools when I'm speaking with Year Three to Six teachers and ask which students do you have who appear to be actually really quite strong readers, but their writing is weak. They can name them. So we see this in action in our classroom. This makes sense.

The fourth implication is sitting around strategic processing, which says that this processing should be taught explicitly both across reading and writing, and this helps students apply the same cognitive operations in both contexts and remember that those strategies were around searching, monitoring and self-correcting, and I'll say that again. So when we're thinking about the connecting and teaching children to use those cognitive processes for both reading and writing, we're talking about searching, monitoring and self-correcting, and that's important across both domains of reading and writing.

So, thinking about how does this reflect the overall development and age of my students? I'm not talking about dumbing down expectations, just making sure that the instruction we're providing is most suitable for the students in front of us.

The implications of reading and writing integration extend beyond just efficiency. Graham and Nusrat, in 2023, found that when students write about text they've read, not only do they enhance their comprehension of those texts, but they also improve their writing skills, and there's more about this in the next episode, which is focused on the practical elements of integrating reading and writing. Similarly, reading instruction leads to improvements in writing quality. So there are these reciprocal positive effects that we see and, as I said, we'll get into the practicalities of that in the next episode.

Integrating reading and writing in all layers of language, integrating reading and writing in text, layers of language (that's words, sentences and text) reflects what research tells us about the nature of these two skills and how we can maximise learning. Using rich text as the stimulus for development, for both comprehension and writing, and applying core principles from cognitive science in our planning means that we're setting students up for success. This is the focus of every text-based unit that we write. This integration isn't about doing more, and if you use our units, you'll know that. One of the concerns about what people find in our text-based units is that there's not enough in there. But actually we're about working smarter, recognising that we must support student cognitive load and provide many opportunities to revisit content and practice skills in slightly increasing levels of complexity so that students can get to that multi-paragraph level text in a confident way. By recognising the shared foundations and processes of reading and writing, we can create more efficient and effective instruction that benefits all students.

In the next episode we'll explore practical ways to implement these research findings in your classroom. I'll share specific strategies, lesson structures and planning approaches that make integrated reading and writing instruction both manageable and powerful. Then, in the following episode, we'll hear from a real-life teacher about how this is coming to life in their school.

Until then, I hope this exploration of the research has given you some food for thought. Check out the reference list, it is there for you to access, so that it you can do some follow-up reading of your own, or find the transcript on our website. Take a highlighter and explore that even further. Remember, small shifts in our instruction can lead to significant gains for our students, but we need to understand why we're doing what we're doing. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast. I'm really happy to be bringing you another Research to the Classroom series and I'm excited to hear about how you have implemented some of what you've heard in your own practice. Until next week, happy teaching everyone. Bye.

Anderson, N. L., & Briggs, C. (2011). Reciprocity between reading and writing: Strategic processing as common ground. The Reading Teacher, 64(7), 546-549.

Fitzgerald, J., & Shanahan, T. (2000). Reading and writing relations and their development. Educational Psychologist, 35(1), 39-50.

Graham, S., & Nusrat, A. (2023). Writing to promote better reading comprehension. In Z. Philippakos & S. Graham (Eds.), Writing and reading connections: Bridging research and practice.

Kim, Y.-S. G. (2020). Interactive dynamic literacy model: An integrative theoretical framework for reading and writing relations. In R. Alves, T. Limpo, & M. Joshi (Eds.), Reading-writing connections: Towards integrative literacy science (pp.11-34). Netherlands: Springer.

Looking for resources and training to connect reading and writing? Join us inside The Resource Room!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Research to the Classroom - Connecting Reading and Writing Episode 1

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Subscribe to the Podcast Hello there, welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast. My name is Jocelyn and I'm really pleased to be bringing you t...

# data[].attributes.headline
Jocelyn Seamer: Connecting Reading and Writing Part 2 (Practical Application)

# data[].attributes.subject
Jocelyn Seamer: Connecting Reading and Writing Part 2 (Practical Application)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
S5 E10 Research to the Classroom - Connecting Reading and Writing Part 2 (Practical Application)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Subscribe to the Podcast Hello there and welcome back to our Research to the Classroom series on the Structured Literacy podcast. I’m Jocelyn an…

# data[].attributes.headline
Jocelyn Seamer: Connecting Reading and Writing Part 3 (Practical Application)

# data[].attributes.subject
Jocelyn Seamer: Connecting Reading and Writing Part 3 (Practical Application)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
S5 E11 Research to the Classroom - Connecting Reading and Writing Part 3 (Practical Application)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Subscribe to the Podcast Jocelyn: Hello there, welcome to this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast. I’m Jocelyn and I’m so pleased to…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Essential reading for teachers, education administrators, and policymakers alike." -STARRED Library Journal

"Education journalist Wexler mounts a compelling critique of American elementary schools.... An informative analysis of elementary education that highlights pervasive problems."-Kirkus Reviews

"There's a huge gulf between what teachers believe about how to teach reading and what scientists have found-which is why so many students have continued to struggle despite their teachers' often heroic efforts. The key to success, it turns out, is exactly the thing teachers have been taught to scorn most: knowledge. It's far more important than the supposedly transferable comprehension 'skills' they're trained to focus on. This critical volume, in which Natalie Wexler deftly lays out the case for knowledge, should begin tipping the scales back toward what best serves students of every age and background."- Doug Lemov, author of Teach Like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College; co-author of Reading Reconsidered: A Practical Guide to Rigorous Literacy Instruction

"For parents, teachers, and anyone who cares about the potential of education to brighten kids' futures, reading The Knowledge Gap will be an eye-opening experience. Through vivid classroom scenes and stories of would-be reformers, Natalie Wexler exposes a crucial aspect of education that is often overlooked: In most American elementary schools, teachers are not given the training and support they need to provide deep, rich content-about history, social studies, science, language and the world around them. And students, especially vulnerable ones, suffer for it."- Peg Tyre, author of The Good School: How Smart Parents Get Their Children the Education They Deserve

"The knowledge gap is real, and its effects are profound. This book offers an accurate, engaging, and clear description of the problem and how to solve it. It's a must-read for educators, parents and policy makers."- Dr. Judith C. Hochman, founder of The Writing Revolution; co-author, The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades

"Natalie Wexler has identified a critical factor that has gone missing in public education, and although it sounds counterintuitive, that factor too often is education-foundational knowledge-itself. For more than three decades, reformers and politicians have lashed teaching and learning to accountability and test results in the name of raising expectations for all. The Knowledge Gap boldly argues that in the process, they have underestimated and lost track of what children, particularly in elementary and middle schools, can and must learn in order to achieve."- Dale Russakoff, author of The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools?

"Natalie Wexler adopts multiple perspectives-the scientist, the teacher, the philanthropist, the historian, and others-to offer a comprehensive answer to the simple question 'Why don't American students read well?' This book is smart, important, and a fascinating read."- Daniel T. Willingham, author of The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads;professor of psychology, University of Virginia

"Using concrete and compelling examples, Natalie Wexler reveals that most American classrooms follow a misguided approach to teaching reading that is especially damaging to students from low-income families. But she also shows that when educators rely on materials backed by research, they can go a long way toward producing the educated citizens we need. For anyone concerned about educational equity and excellence, The Knowledge Gap provides a way to think about both the problem and solutions."- Karin Chenoweth, author of Schools that Succeed: How Educators Marshal the Power of Systems for Improvement; creator of the ExtraOrdinary Districts podcast

"Natalie Wexler is a powerfully engaging writer, and The Knowledge Gap is a timely and sobering investigation of what is broken in the nation's education system. Artfully weaving together portraits of teachers and students with scientific findings on the learning process, Wexler thoughtfully explores the power of knowledge-and makes a strong case for how and why the nation should harness it to improve outcomes for all students."- Ulrich Boser, author of Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or How to Become an Expert in Just about Anything
"As a teacher and the leader of a state school system, I have seen the debilitating impact on a child of an education devoid of historical, cultural, and scientific knowledge-and the human potential unleashed when that knowledge is allowed to develop. Natalie Wexler is not the first to boldly raise this issue, but The Knowledge Gap may be the clearest and most cogent telling of a story not told often enough. As an industry, education is often ignorant of its own past and of how the present came to be. Masterfully capturing a complex tale, Wexler shows us that something is wrong, explains how it happened, and reminds us that it doesn't have to be that way."- John White, Louisiana State Superintendent of Education

"Using real world examples, Natalie Wexler convincingly affirms the primary responsibility of elementary schools to empower the most disadvantaged students with knowledge of the words and worlds that a society assumes is necessary for human flourishing. She makes a compelling case that depriving students of this core knowledge in the name of teaching 'skills and strategies' or embracing the latest educational fads only exacerbates their disadvantage. The Knowledge Gap is a must read for educators genuinely interested in achieving better outcomes for kids."- Ian Rowe, Chief Executive Officer, Public Prep Network

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Knowledge Gap by Natalie Wexler: 9780735213555 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Essential reading for teachers, education administrators, and policymakers alike." -STARRED Library Journal "Education journalist Wexler mounts a compelling critique of American elementary schools.... An informative analysis of elementary education that highlights pervasive problems."-Kirkus Reviews "There's a huge gulf between what teachers believe about how to teach reading and what scientists have found-which is why so many students have continued to struggle despite their teachers' often heroic efforts.

# data[].attributes.headline
4 Strategies for Building Content Knowledge

# data[].attributes.subject
4 Strategies for Building Content Knowledge

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
4 Strategies for Building Content Knowledge

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Exposing young students to rich content knowledge helps them become better readers and paves the way for PBL in later years.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Fuchs, D., Fuchs, L., & Burish, P. (2000). Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies: An Evidence-Based Practice to Promote Reading Achievement. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 15(2), 85-91.

Koskinen, P. & Blum, I. (1986). Paired repeated reading: A classroom strategy for developing fluent reading. The Reading Teacher, 40(1), 70-75.

Topping, K. (1995). Paired reading, spelling and writing: The handbook for teachers and parents. Continuum International Publishing Group.

Strickland, D. S., Ganske, K., & Monroe, J. K. (2002). Supporting struggling readers and writers: Strategies for classroom intervention 3-6. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Paired reading is a strategy to help students build fluency by reading aloud to each other. More fluent readers can be paired with less fluent readers, or children who read at the same level can be paired to reread a story.

# data[].attributes.headline
Placing Text at the Center of the Standards-Aligned ELA Classroom

# data[].attributes.subject
Placing Text at the Center of the Standards-Aligned ELA Classroom

# data[].attributes.body
Standards-Aligned ELA Classroom

# data[].attributes.headline
Tim Shanahan: The Instructional Level Concept Revisited: Teaching with Complex Text

# data[].attributes.subject
Tim Shanahan: The Instructional Level Concept Revisited: Teaching with Complex Text

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Instructional Level Concept Revisited: Teaching with Complex Text | Shanahan on Literacy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This entry explains why teaching children to read at their “instructional levels” is a bad idea. Students, in fact, seem to do better, when placed in texts beyond their supposed reading levels.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Transcription:

(transcribed by kayla.r.fainer@gmail.com)

Melissa Milner 00:09

Hi, this is Melissa Milner. Welcome to The Teacher As... podcast. The goal of this weekly podcast is to help you explore your passions and learn from others in education and beyond to better your teaching. The Teacher As... podcast will highlight innovative practices and uncommon parallels in education.

It's Adventures in Co-Teaching, and it's not just Tricia Piacentini and myself this time. We have some special guests. So Heather, why don't you introduce yourself?

Heather Sullivan 00:44

Sure. My name is Heather Sullivan. I'm a second grade co-teacher with Olivia Morris. And this is my second year in second grade. But previously, I taught for three years in third grade.

Melissa Milner 00:59

Awesome. And Olivia.

Olivia Morris 01:01

So my name is Olivia Morris, and I am a special education teacher in second grade, of course, with Heather. So I've been a special education teacher in second grade, this is my fifth year. And Heather's my second teacher that I've co-taught with, which is really exciting.

Melissa Milner 01:19

Very cool. And then Tricia, we all know Tricia. Tricia, say hi.

Tricia Piacentini 01:24

Hi, I'm Tricia Piacentini. And I co-teach fourth grade with Melissa, our distinguished host. And this is our first year co-teaching. We were really hoping we could pick your guy's brain about what works, what doesn't work, how do you guys structure co-teaching. We have a bunch of questions. So I'm excited to kind of dive into this.

Melissa Milner 01:50

So Tricia, why don't you start? You had a really good question that you were thinking of asking.

Tricia Piacentini 01:54

Yeah, I have a-- so I was just wondering, how do you guys organize your co-teaching? Do you divide jobs? Does it depend on what you're teaching? How do you organize what you're teaching and when?

Heather Sullivan 02:10

Yeah, I can start. And then Olivia, jump in whenever. So last year was my first year in second grade. So I really relied on Olivia a lot to kind of teach me a lot of the second grade content, but also the ways of second grade. Because I came in strong with a lot of third grade content that was a little bit just too much for our basically beginning of the year first grader. So she really helped me learn what the expectations are and things like that.

For organizing purposes, last year, I feel like it's a better example, because this year is a little different. But we just took subjects. So I did reading, and then Olivia did a bunch with math. But then I think the most important, too, is she did a lot with science, social studies and writing. I would literally sit and take notes on how she was doing things. That just helped organize planning purposes. So you had your different sections. But I really think it depends on the year and depends on the case loads.

Tricia Piacentini 03:20

Okay, yeah, that was my question, too. So where last year you were new to second grade, do you feel like this year, now that you know a little bit more about second grade, has that changed? I know, Olivia, your caseload has changed this year. And I was thinking of that. Because I'm thinking about my caseload this year. And I know the students coming up next year.

So I'm anticipating, as my first year as a co-teacher, that year to year roles change depending on the special education caseload and the caseload of students in general that come into your classroom. And now that you've done this for five years, have you found that to be true?

Olivia Morris 04:00

Yes, 100%. And even if we share what we're lead teaching, we always-- I mean, this year is just so crazy, because you know, who really gets their planning time with everything going on. Everything takes so much longer. But last year, we were so lucky, we would have our specials at the end of the day.

So at the end of the day, we would go through, okay, this week, what's happening in reading? What's happening in math? And just bouncing back and forth, like, oh, it'd be cool if we did this or different things like that.

So last year, it was definitely nice to kind of share that, but also stay connected in how we were delivering that instruction, bouncing ideas off each other. But this year, my caseload is a little bit-- I have more students. And their needs are more individualized to what they can access in the curriculum.

So I feel like Heather's done such a nice job of manning the ship of our class of what feels like a million kids right now, so that I can focus on the students on my caseload. And so every year, it kind of changes. And then there'll be a new curriculum introduced, and I'll start back at zero.

Tricia Piacentini 05:25

Yeah, that's always the wild card, right? Here you go, new curriculum.

Melissa Milner 05:29

Speaking of delivering the instruction, when we were not in COVID, clearly, Heather, you were still in a learning process. So you maybe weren't jumping in on some of the things. You were sitting back and watching and learning.

But with the COVID thing now, are you even ever in the same room? Or are you delivering most of that instruction to the general ed students and Olivia is mostly working in a different room? How is it physically? Who's where?

Heather Sullivan 06:03

Good question. So it really depends on, I would say, what hybrid week we're in. So if we are in an A week, it's nice that there's a teacher in each room. Because sometimes, we'll each deliver the lesson just to the students in front of us and a few students that are remote. And that's just nice, because it just allows us to focus on half the students at a time.

And there's times where either Olivia or I will zoom in to the other class. It's nice to be able to pop over and quickly be like, hey, do you want to try this? Or maybe, I'm noticing this, let's give this a try. So that's nice in person.

When we are on B weeks, we do a lot of streaming in for some of the friends in school. But sometimes they're doing their own thing and we're kind of doing our own thing. And that's okay, because everyone really gets what they need. It's kind of a great week to do that. Fridays, we join forces. And we do some whole class, some breakout rooms for different servicing. But it really just depends.

On our week where we had to be, all of us, full remote, it was like co-teaching again, back and forth with different mini lessons and read alouds. And it felt so great. But, of course, there's always challenges with things like technology and making sure kids have access to everything. So by no means was it easy, but it felt like normal again.

Tricia Piacentini 07:43

Yeah, I would agree. I actually feel like sometimes the remote weeks, when everyone had to be remote, it's actually easier to do small group work. Because the kids can see each other. They're closer to each other for conversations and stuff. For some of that, I felt like it went better with the remote only. But it sounds like you guys found that a little bit more fluid.

Because right now, I'm in person and Melissa is fully remote. So we're never in the building together. I'll be in the building. And I have our paraprofessional, who's wonderful, who's in the other room. So I have another adult. And our rooms are adjoining, which is such a gift. But still, we go almost the whole day, and I can't talk to Melissa. We just text back and forth. It's really hard to connect. It's really weird, you know?

And then the week that we were remote only, I was like in full communication with her all day. I'm like, this is so much more connected. And I would have never anticipated that before this whole thing.

Melissa Milner 08:42

Olivia, so when you started with the teacher before Heather, did you find that there were differences in teaching styles? And then you start with Heather, and did you have to start over with figuring out what are our teaching styles, and are we compatible that way, that whole compatibility thing?

Olivia Morris 09:00

So my co-teacher before was and is an amazing teacher. And I was so lucky to start with her. Because she had so much experience. So I really feel like everything about second grade, I really learned from her, which was great. So then I felt a little bit confident going into this new relationship, where I felt like I could participate and give that gen ed knowledge side, even though I am a special education teacher.

So having that switch, of course, when things change, that's hard, of course, with everything. And everyone was so nervous about the switches. But I really feel like Heather and I-- and Heather, you should speak to this, too. But I really feel like we just snapped into it and got right into the groove. It was really an easy transition for me.

And I feel like Heather and I have similar views about teaching and the same philosophy. And so it was really easy. Plus, I feel like we're both-- I always say this. I feel like I'm a laid back teacher. But maybe it's not true at all. I don't know what other people would say.

Heather Sullivan 10:15

No, you are. You absolutely are.

Olivia Morris 10:18

I feel like we're very flexible and very go with the flow. So it really is working to our advantage, which I had no problem shifting. But I don't know. Heather, how did you feel about it?

Heather Sullivan 10:33

So at first, I didn't really know what to expect in regards to, again, the organization. And I think I probably asked Olivia a thousand questions as we were transitioning in. But she was just so great and flexible. And I'd be like, hey, how about this? She'd be like, sure. I don't think there was many things that was like, oh, let's compromise.

It was just so easy. And we say all the time, it's like we almost have the same brain. Oh, yeah, let's do that. Oh, I was thinking that, too. And so it was a big, almost, relief.

I always say, change is really hard. And I was worried how second grade would be, because I loved third so much. And nothing against third grade, but I am in love with second grade now and the co-teaching model. Because I think that it not only benefits us, as teachers, because I'm literally learning from Olivia every single day.

But the students, to see their growth socially, emotionally and academically is amazing. And we always say, they're all our students. So we're both your teachers, all of us. So I just love that model. And I think that more schools should have it.

Olivia Morris 11:50

Yes, it lends to such great lessons about empathy and inclusion, as well. Every year, we start out with-- I think, Heather, last year was the first year that we did it. I mean, we always teach the kids, everyone gets what they need, everyone gets what they need.

Last year, we found this Band-Aid lesson, where every kid gets assigned an injury, from like a scraped knee or I bumped my head or broken leg. We talk about what's equal, what's fair, different things like that. And they always say that fair is equal. Everyone gets the same. If he gets two scoops of ice cream, I want two scoops of ice cream.

And so after we give them their little injury, we solve the first one, which is always a scrape. Because you can fix it with a Band-Aid. Everyone gets a Band-Aid. Everyone gets the same thing. You guys told us, that's fair. And it's just a great way to teach about equity and how everyone gets what they need. Because then we refer to it all year.

And especially in our classroom with our students, they need breaks, and they need fidgets, and they need adaptive seating. And everything is so different for some of them. So it's a great way to say, everyone gets what they need. And the kids all benefit from that. And so then when it's their turn to get something that they need, it's an easy switch. I think it's a great model. I'm all for it.

Tricia Piacentini 13:18

Yeah, that's really well said. Really well said, Olivia. So you guys said that the kids really see you as both your teachers, that you're both their teachers. I mean, do you feel like you have to do anything special to cultivate that sense in the classroom? Or do you feel like the students fell into that?

Olivia Morris 13:37

I think it's the way that we start off the year and the way that we introduce everybody. We have a paraprofessional that works with us this year. Last year, it was just the two of us. And so Heather will do a great job. And sometimes I'm not as great, but I always try, too, to say Miss Sullivan and I did this. And Miss Sullivan and I talked, and we thought about this to say that we're doing things together. And we address our emails to families as such.

And at our school, because families are so familiar with this model because it's been around for a while, families are on board. And they understand it, which trickles down to their children understanding it. So we always try to use that language to cultivate how we're a team, and we're your teachers, and we're working together.

The other thing we have, too, and we always have to talk about this with the kids is if you ask one teacher-- it's like when kids go home and ask one parent. And that parent says no. So they ask the other parent. And we have to do that right away, especially sometimes three of us in the classroom all together. So they can kind of go back and forth to see if they'll get the answer they want.

Tricia Piacentini 14:54

Yeah, we actually started to run into that this year, as well. So it's so funny that you say that.

Olivia Morris 15:00

Yeah, every year.

Melissa Milner 15:03

Do you both do all the parent conferences together?

Heather Sullivan 15:08

Yes. Which is great, because Olivia has so many great strengths, especially the social emotional side. And I think particularly this year, that was such a huge resource for families in these very much uncharted waters. And just like you guys, we have a lot of students this year. And so to kind of truck through with someone to get it done, by the end, we were celebrating. We were cheering.

They were great conferences. I don't really think we had a bad one. But it's just a lot. And it was nice to have someone to go through it and bounce ideas off of prior to meeting with parents.

Melissa Milner 15:57

Absolutely. In a way, it helps that I'm remote all the time and Tricia is in. Because we can both give the remote, how is your child doing remotely? And then I know I can't do this conference alone, because Tricia is the only one who's in to give that feedback about being in. So we were gonna do it together anyway. But it even was more so, we couldn't have done it otherwise. Because I wouldn't be able to speak to what's going on in person.

Tricia Piacentini 16:28

One of the things that really surprised me is how quickly and seamlessly the kids just accepted that Melissa and I were their teachers, and our paraprofessional, Mrs. Wilkinson, who's wonderful. Just we're all their teachers, they come to all of us. It's not like, oh, this is just a Mrs. Milner thing. This is just a Mrs. P thing. This is just a Mrs. Wilkinson thing. And I've been very impressed by that.

And we certainly did those same things as you. We made a concerted effort to try to include both of us on every email and respond together. Certainly, it's not perfect, but we really make that effort. And I think that's pretty much it.

We don't have to say to the kids, remember, so and so is your teacher, too. There's none of that happening. They don't see us as-- even the paraprofessional as a helper teacher. They really see it as this classroom just has a bunch of teachers. That's just how we roll, you know?

Melissa Milner 17:26

That's right.

Tricia Piacentini 17:27

Because this whole thing was new for me. So coming from a sub separatesetting and a partial inclusion setting where I drop in and out of rooms, it was very clear that, although the kids were friendly and knew who I was, I was sort of that teacher who floats in and out.

So it was a different experience for me. So I anticipated this being so much more work to get to that place with the kids. And it wasn't, which was really exciting to see.

Melissa Milner 17:54

Do you have tips or top ideas for making co-teaching work?

Olivia Morris 18:02

My number one thing, and it makes me laugh, because we work with a population of students that this is really hard for me to say it all day long, but just be flexible and really not to take anything personally. And I think that can be hard. Because teachers usually are so passionate about what they're teaching and how they're teaching it. And it's such a passionate and emotion filled job of love and this and that.

And just to be willing to be open or change how you've done things, and I think that's the biggest tip. And you have to be able to really, truly do that, which is hard. That would be my tip is just be flexible, and be open, and just try new things. And listen. I don't know. What do you think, Heather?

Heather Sullivan 18:59

I completely agree. Because I feel like it might not be the way that you envisioned it as the teacher. But then when your co-teacher does it, you're still learning something new to add to your bag of tricks. And I think just being open and communicating is crucial. Because you don't want to bottle anything up, because that's not going to get anywhere.

And modeling, too, I think that's so important. We talk all the time, sometimes in front of the kids, like, oh, what do you think about this? Or even like, oops, I made a mistake. Sorry, Mrs. Morris. Mrs. Morris, she'll have to tell that story. But it's another thing we model that we all need to do all the time. But we also have a saying, mistakes help us learn and grow. And I learned it's okay, too, for the other teacher to speak up, too, in the moment.

So at first, let's say I'm teaching reading or if Mrs. Morris was teaching math. If you have a great idea, quickly share it. It will add to the lesson, and it will be important. Whereas at first, I was like, oh, I don't want to interrupt, I don't want to interrupt. But then in reality, a quick comment might make a connection for another student. And not that you want to constantly be interjecting, but having multiple ideas and multiple perspectives, I feel like, is important for the amount of diverse learners that we have.

Olivia Morris 20:29

Yes, so true. And that's kind of where I was going with this. So thank you for putting it into words for me with the not taking anything personal. If you're interjecting, you add something, it's not because what they're doing, you don't think that's the right thing to do, or you think your way is better.

But it's just adding that second layer, which is always good, because not everyone takes the information or the instructions the same way. Some people need a spin on things. So I think just getting comfortable with that is really helpful.

Tricia Piacentini 21:02

I think that that's an awesome point. Because Melissa has a lot more experience with content than I do. I'm sort of like, people give me content, and I make it accessible to kids. That's sort of my gig for a long, long time. My whole thing is, I don't always know where second grade ends and third grade begins. Do you know what I mean?

Because I used to work on a continuum based on where a student was at skill wise, not necessarily focused as much on content. And so this year, that's a big shift for me, learning content. And Melissa is so much more knowledgeable about content than I am.

And so I've been trying to do science and social studies. And I'll do things, and she'll jump in. And I'll be like, oh, thank god she said that, because I wouldn't have thought of that. So I actually really feel like I'm learning a lot by those moments that you're describing. I wouldn't take that personally, but I can see where someone might. A lot of that has to do with the relationship that we have, which is kind of nice. I come into the position like, oh, I really want to learn more.

So I think as a co-teacher, if you're coming into a co-teacher thinking you're going to bestow your wisdom on your partner, that's going to go poorly. Teaching in general, but particularly co-teaching, if you come in saying, boy, I'm really excited-- if you're excited about learning in general, then you're going to be excited to learn how to teach more, or teach better, or teach differently. It just so rings true what you're saying.

So I'm just going to share one of my big failures. So I was teaching-- yeah, I'm just gonna put it out there. I am not feeling particularly vulnerable now. I feel very safe with you all. So I did a plate tectonics lesson that went horribly wrong. So we've been calling it the plate tectonic debacle. And so Melissa was very respectful and didn't interrupt me or anything.

And then afterward, we talked about it. And I was like, I so wish you had stopped me in the middle. It was too long. The content was too high for the kids. It was an awesome video for middle school, right? And I was like, this is so much detail and it's great. But it was way too much for the kids. And so then I ended up scaling stuff back and learning from that experience.

Melissa Milner 23:20

Yeah, and I was being too polite. I knew exactly what she was doing. I knew where she was coming from. How do I tell-- like I didn't even know how to in front of the kids. And it wasn't as horrible as she's saying, by the way. It was not--

Tricia Piacentini 23:38

Oh, it was bad. She's being way nicer. It was a bad lesson.

Melissa Milner 23:42

It was not Plate Tectonics Gate. But it's more just learning the pacing. But at the same time, maybe I'm better at the pacing. But I'm not always great at being super clear and introducing something. So I'll introduce something. And Tricia will come on and say, Mrs. Milner.

And she'll ask it like a kid. Mrs. Milner, do you mean da, da, da? And I'm like, gosh, darn it. I didn't even say that. So I'm like, thank goodness she came on and said that. So it's like, I don't mind when she comes in on it. So maybe I need to not be so tiptoeing.

Olivia Morris 24:25

And that's a perfect way to do it, too, is to ask a question with that student perspective. Especially as special educators, I think we're always thinking of, how are the students on my caseload perceiving this and what might they need from teachers. So that's a great way to do it, too, is to just ask it in that student perspective way.

The other thing, too, is apologizing. There have been so many times where maybe I wasn't my best self. Or maybe things didn't go as I planned. And for me to say, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I left you off that email. I can't believe I did that. That's totally my mistake. And to be able to stop and be like, I was just having a really bad day. I'm sorry, yesterday, if I-- you know? Just like in any relationship, being a co-teacher, it's a relationship.

So any of those good relationship skills, but that's the other one, too. If you recognize that like, okay, yesterday, I just had no patience. I just couldn't get out of my own way, wasn't really feeling it. So I'm sorry. Today's gonna be better. That's really important, too. Heather and I don't really disagree often.

But there definitely have been moments, I know for myself, especially this year, it's crazy teaching this year. So it's good to just be humble enough to be like, oh, my bad. I'm sorry.

Melissa Milner 25:58

Yeah, and I think also just to be reflective. And realize, oh, I didn't-- being a reflective practitioner is so important in co-teaching.

Heather Sullivan 26:10

Absolutely. And we're all human. We all make mistakes. We all have good days. We all bad days. And I think sometimes, for teachers in particular, we all have lives outside. But sometimes it's hard, because you put the kids first. But it's nice to have a co-teacher to remind use like, no, you have something to do. Go, I got this.

Melissa Milner 26:35

Yes, absolutely.

Heather Sullivan 26:38

It's just that balance. And I mean, Olivia and I both have a nice thing in common, that we're both engaged. Now Mrs. Morris is married, which is very exciting. But it was nice to be human and talk about things other than school, too. And I do think that that added to our relationship.

Olivia Morris 26:56

Yes.

Heather Sullivan 26:57

Because there is a time you've got to just shut off work, because it could consume you. And I think having those real conversations really added to our relationship.

Olivia Morris 27:09

Yes, so true.

Melissa Milner 27:11

That's awesome.

Tricia Piacentini 27:12

Yeah, that is awesome.

Melissa Milner 27:14

We're not good at stopping.

Tricia Piacentini 27:16

We're not there yet. Melissa is worse than me, though. I will say that. Like she works-- I just don't even know she sleeps, just so you know.

Melissa Milner 27:24

It's sort of my-- it's my hobby. I enjoy it. I don't do the hard stuff. I do the fun stuff, like planning curriculum. I don't sit and do grading. That I put off, and I put off. But thank goodness, I enjoy my work.

Tricia Piacentini 27:43

Thank you, you guys. We were excited to talk to you. Because we're really learning. We're really at the beginning.

Melissa Milner 27:51

This was really great.

Heather Sullivan 27:52

This was awesome.

Olivia Morris 27:54

I know. Thank you for having us.

Melissa Milner 27:57

If you enjoyed this episode and have not done so already, please hit the subscribe button for The Teacher As... podcast so you can get future episodes. For my blog, transcripts of this episode and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.TheTeacherAs.com. My contact information for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are also on this site.

I am sending a special thanks to Linda and Lester Fleishman, my mom and dad, for being so supportive. They are the voices you hear in the Zooming In soundbite. And my dad composed and performed the background music you are listening to right now. My intro music was "Upbeat Party" by Scott Holmes.

So what are you zooming in on? I would love to hear from you. My hope is that we all share what we are doing in the classroom in order to teach, remind, affirm and inspire each other. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Episode 27: Adventures in Coteaching - The Teacher As

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Melissa and Tricia discuss the coteaching model with their colleagues Heather Sullivan and Olivia Morris.

# data[].attributes.headline
Teaching Labsite Organization (for Thursday)

# data[].attributes.subject
Teaching Labsite Organization (for Thursday)

# data[].attributes.headline
Austin's G3 Demo Labsite (Wednesday) Slides

# data[].attributes.subject
Austin's G3 Demo Labsite (Wednesday) Slides

# data[].attributes.headline
Austin's G5 Demo Labsite (Wednesday) Slides

# data[].attributes.subject
Austin's G5 Demo Labsite (Wednesday) Slides

# data[].attributes.headline
G1 Possibilities: Shared Texts for Celebrations

# data[].attributes.subject
G1 Possibilities: Shared Texts for Celebrations

# data[].attributes.body
Big Red Balloon

Our Favorite Day of the Year

# data[].attributes.headline
Day 2: End of Day Reflections "Head, Heart, Hands"

# data[].attributes.subject
Day 2: End of Day Reflections "Head, Heart, Hands"

# data[].attributes.headline
Agreements for Constructing Text-Centered Units & Choosing a Central Text (Think, Pair, Square, Share)

# data[].attributes.subject
Agreements for Constructing Text-Centered Units & Choosing a Central Text (Think, Pair, Square, Share)

# data[].attributes.headline
Doug Lemov: Fluency's Impact on Comprehension

# data[].attributes.subject
Doug Lemov: Fluency's Impact on Comprehension

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ep. 3, Literacy and the Science of Learning: Doug Lemov on Fluency’s Impact on Comprehension - Knowledge Matters Campaign

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
July 08, 2025 - The Knowledge Matters Campaign

# data[].attributes.headline
Austin's G5 Unit-Specific Comprehension Task 

# data[].attributes.subject
Austin's G5 Unit-Specific Comprehension Task 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Literacy Teaching Practices in Primary copy 2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Achievethecore.org :: ELA / Literacy - ELA / Literacy Lessons

# data[].attributes.headline
Slides: Background Knowledge and Text Sets

# data[].attributes.subject
Slides: Background Knowledge and Text Sets