00:00:05:19 - 00:00:31:20
Emily Smith
Welcome to Advancing Literacy Beyond the Classroom. This podcast is for families and caregivers to support the literacy learning that goes on outside of school. We welcome all of you to join us to make learning fun and purposeful. We know that literacy learning is a life thing and not just a school thing. As family members and caregivers, we know that your role is central to your kids literacy development.
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Emily Smith
You may have young children, kids, pre-teens, and or young adults. We have recommendations to support their literacy journey. Let's get started. I'm Emily Smith.
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Kim Brooks
I'm Amanda Hartman, and I'm Kim Brooks. We're staff developers at Advancing Literacy at Teachers College in New York City. We're a center within the Teacher Education and Community Partnerships Division, providing professional development for school districts in the NYC metro area across the country and worldwide. This school year, we will be offering over 20 free workshops for families, caregivers, and educators.
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Kim Brooks
You can find our events and future workshops on our social media pages at TCAdvancingLit and our website AdvancingLiteracy.tc.columbia.edu
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Kim Brooks
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Emily Smith
Thanks, Kim, and thanks, Amanda. I'm glad we're all together today. We usually start with our title and talk a little bit about what the title means and why this topic matters. Kim, what are some of your thoughts?
00:01:35:09 - 00:02:01:08
Kim Brooks
So our title today is Practical and Positive Strategies to Support Grammar and Spelling Development. It's kind of a mouthful, but I think it's a really important topic because it's interesting that caregivers might remember how they were taught spelling and grammar when they were in school. I'm envisioning lists that were handed out on a Monday, memorized that week, and then tested on Friday, or grammar worksheets where you might circle every now and underline every verb.
00:02:01:09 - 00:02:18:02
Kim Brooks
And you might not know why. Right. So those are my memories, at least when I was taught. And when I think about it, I was a really good memory. I could even do the bonus words each week, but I don't know that I was actually taught how to spell phonetically. I'm just curious how you remember spelling and grammar.
00:02:18:03 - 00:02:19:04
Kim Brooks
Was it the same for you?
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Emily Smith
I feel like that was an exact match to my experience. It was all about the list that came on Monday, the pretest that I failed miserably, and then the post-test where I probably got 100% because I was dutiful and I memorized the words for the test, and then probably within hours, was misspelling those words in other writing tasks.
00:02:40:01 - 00:02:51:08
Emily Smith
So I had very little retention of any of the work that was happening there. And I don't remember any instruction about how to spell. It was just a test. Amanda, what about you?
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Amanda Hartman
Yeah, I appreciate.
00:02:53:04 - 00:02:54:11
Amanda Hartman
All of that.
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Amanda Hartman
It really highlights the importance of reapplying what we learn. It makes us really think about what is learning mean. And researchers like widely Blevins, who studies phonics and spelling, emphasizes that in early literacy, to acquire it, you have to be able to do it both out of context and in context. So that feels really important in the learning process.
00:03:23:03 - 00:03:54:00
Amanda Hartman
But here, like in our title where we have positive experiences, not just practical but positive. I remember having so many negative experiences of just all the things that I did wrong, and just what that does to me as a learner wanting to do more. It kind of shuts down. It can shut down your creativity and the actual practice of it.
00:03:54:00 - 00:03:59:04
Amanda Hartman
So that really stands out to me in the title.
00:03:59:06 - 00:04:27:21
Emily Smith
Yeah. I think one of the most important things for us to keep in mind is that when we're talking and to really keep at the forefront of this, when we're talking about spelling and grammar, we're really thinking about communication and that we want kids to be able to share ideas, their opinions, their thoughts, their stories. We want them to be able to share all of this through writing so that other people can read and understand their work.
00:04:27:22 - 00:04:53:00
Emily Smith
And then I also think it's important to think that this is a continuum of learning. This is not just something that you learn in elementary school, but that you are continuing to learn about spelling and grammar. If it's a little bit different than vocabulary, I think you're constantly learning vocabulary, and probably there is a bit of an end point and you're learning about grammar structures, but you can still be curious and explore them in all sorts of ways as an adult.
00:04:53:03 - 00:05:32:16
Amanda Hartman
Well, and I think that idea, particularly as caregivers, to remember why and remembering the why then also can guide my practice of working with children. So spelling. Why is it important to spell or to spell in conventional ways is so that other people can read it? And to remember that even in a language like English, where it's spoken worldwide from different countries to different dialects, even on the page can be spelled differently.
00:05:32:16 - 00:06:06:01
Amanda Hartman
So that becomes really important to remember and to keep at the center. Spelling and writing is for communicating. Same with grammar. Right. Why do we have grammar is so that our ideas can be conveyed in clear ways. So how do we communicate those ideas, both in our oral language and in our in our written language? So to remember that it's not just is this right or wrong, it's why do we do this is to communicate with others, right?
00:06:06:02 - 00:06:25:04
Emily Smith
Right. To communicate. Great. I think that gives us a little perspective on our title and our topic. And the next thing we typically do in this podcast is to turn to research. And what are some key points that we want to highlight in terms of research? Kim, I think you had some things for us to think about on that topic.
00:06:25:09 - 00:06:49:05
Kim Brooks
Yeah. So when I was putting together some research, I was thinking about the audience of family and caregivers and what could be practical, what could be positive, and without getting to in the weeds with educational terms. So some of my research is coming from Tim Shanahan's work, and this blog post is debating explicit spelling instruction versus invented spelling.
00:06:49:05 - 00:07:19:16
Kim Brooks
And so he uses other researchers out there to prove both sides to the story. Right. So we almost need this hybrid approach to explicit teaching based on the phonics that goes into spelling. And we'll talk about that in a minute, but also allowing students to use that invented spelling, like you said. So it doesn't feel like I can't spell words that I don't know to improve my writing, because I'm going to be closed into this sort of box of only the words I can spell accurately.
00:07:19:17 - 00:07:40:21
Kim Brooks
So here's some of the research he says, “Explicit teaching and spelling improves spelling and increases the vocabulary diversity in student writing.” So obviously we want to teach explicitly. The spelling will then improve. But the payoff is not just for spilling. The payoff is for other vocabulary that they can then use, I would say in their writing, but also in their speaking.
00:07:40:22 - 00:08:03:16
Kim Brooks
Right. And then “inventive spelling, together with alphabetic knowledge and phonemic awareness, influence reading and spelling development.” So again, not to get too cumbersome with educational terms, but just that when we provide this instruction on phonics, the encoding of spelling, and then we put it together with some of those other skills that we want kids to learn and be able to do that.
00:08:03:16 - 00:08:06:00
Kim Brooks
It improves overall reading as well.
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Emily Smith
And I think that might be a good spot to talk about. What does it mean when we say invented spelling? People might use the term invented or inventive. When you hear that term. For me, it means that kids are giving it their best shot. They're like saying the word listening for sounds, and we'll talk more about that. But but they're trying.
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Emily Smith
Right, right.
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Amanda Hartman
Yeah. When kids are approximating spelling, they are trying to give their best shot. And I think that piece of research really shows is that the work of stretching out sounds, to hear them discretely and to hear them so well that you're like, oh, I know that letter. And now I'm going to put it down the best that I can.
00:08:50:13 - 00:09:20:24
Amanda Hartman
That whole process is foundational to writing later on, reading later on. So just that work of being able to stretch out, hear the sounds and for kids to be able to do that and then attach it to a letter. So what the research has shown is that approximated spelling or inventive spelling, is one of the number one ways to work on that idea of phonemic awareness.
00:09:21:00 - 00:09:22:08
Emily Smith
Yeah.
00:09:22:10 - 00:09:47:20
Kim Brooks
And then just the last bit of research, again, coming out of the Shanahan blog, was that “explicit spelling instruction improves spelling,” but also improves “reading and writing”. And I think sometimes we think reading and writing improves spelling. And that makes sense. But then the reverse is also true. Better spelling instruction can improve reading and writing. So I thought that was really interesting that it all comes as a package together.
00:09:47:22 - 00:10:09:12
Kim Brooks
So after we kind of thought through explicit teaching where I'm teaching the phonics versus the inventive or invented spelling, I thought it'd be helpful to show the process of what spelling actually is. Again, sort of in layman's terms of you mentioned the sounds and stretching out the sounds. So to start with spelling, really we need to back up and really start with reading.
00:10:09:12 - 00:10:28:19
Kim Brooks
So what does decoding look like when I need to read a word. So I have the word cat in front of me. I might not know its cat yet. A lot has to happen in my brain for me to recognize that that is the word cat. But I see on the page these formations and we know those are called C, A and T.
00:10:28:21 - 00:10:55:10
Kim Brooks
And then what I have to do is map each letter to a sound that it makes. And this is where the phonics comes in. It's that letter sound correspondence. So I'm thinking to myself, a c might have a /k/ sound at the beginning of the word, an a lot of times when it's in the middle of a word like this, it has a short sound, so it may be /a/, and then the t I can clip off and say /t/ so together.
00:10:55:10 - 00:11:17:23
Kim Brooks
If I slide through those sounds and put them together, I might be thinking, /k/, /a/, /t/, cat, right? And then it doesn't stop there, because then I have to know, oh, that word that I just did all of that process for is actually a thing. And it's four legged creature that I know that's like different than a dog, right?
00:11:17:23 - 00:11:38:16
Kim Brooks
That I could have as a pet. So all of that has to happen when we read, and we want that to become automatic. And that sort of starting with the letters, going through the sounds, blending those sounds together and finding the word. Well, spelling is the opposite process of that. It's still part of phonics, but it's like the other side of the coin, so to speak.
00:11:38:17 - 00:12:01:14
Kim Brooks
So when I have encoding, which is the opposite of decoding. So this is just spelling, I'm doing it in reverse. I'm thinking to myself, I want to write this sentence with the word cat. And it's in my head the cat was black and I know the word cat. And I can say the word cat, right? That's the sound first, as opposed to the letters first.
00:12:01:14 - 00:12:27:08
Kim Brooks
And then I want to think, okay, Cat, what do I hear? What do I hear? /k/ /k/ /k/ And I could think to myself, like, my name is Kim, so /k/ starts with a K. That might be like a phonetically accurate but not not spelling accuracy. Way to do it. But let's just, for the sake of it say I know that /k/ makes a C letter C, and that sound is made by the letter C, and then /k/ /a/.
00:12:27:10 - 00:12:47:19
Kim Brooks
Okay that's an A. Got it. Write it down cat. Oh that's a T write it down. And now I've formed the word cat. And of course I have to have my handwriting and I have to know how to form those letters. But now I've taken the sound of the word cat and segmented. Segmented it then matched it with letters.
00:12:47:19 - 00:12:56:02
Kim Brooks
And now I've written the word cat. So again, a lot happens in our brains to be able to just spell the word cat and put it on paper.
00:12:56:04 - 00:13:19:23
Emily Smith
Absolutely. And if an early writer wrote Kate, and especially if their name was Kim, right. And wrote Kat and expected us to be able to read it as Cat we would be. Especially if they're just learning to read and write. We would accept that as an invented spelling. And they were practicing their letter sound combinations and segmenting and then blending things back together.
00:13:19:23 - 00:13:20:24
Amanda Hartman
So. Correct.
00:13:21:00 - 00:13:42:01
Amanda Hartman
Yeah, yeah. And if I haven't learned the short a sound, I don't know what letter you know that there is. I might just write C and T. And again there's work to do there. Right. But as an approximator I'm using what I know about phonics to help me in that early writing.
00:13:42:02 - 00:14:01:16
Emily Smith
And I think it might be helpful here just to bring a little bit of perspective for families and caregivers. Again, we're thinking about this outside of the school day and when we want kids to be comfortable writing at home, we want it to feel positive. And it could be useful to think about this in context of how kids learn other things.
00:14:01:16 - 00:14:21:24
Emily Smith
So if you consider again, your kids might be learning to play a sport, or they might be learning to play an instrument, or they might learn even to do something like how to bake cookies in the kitchen with you. You don't get upset if they spill a little flour or if they pour the wet ingredients in with the dry ones before they're supposed to.
00:14:22:00 - 00:14:46:09
Emily Smith
You sort of manage and keep going. And if they're learning to play soccer and they kick the ball out of bounds, or they miss the goal or there's not a big fuss about it, you're expecting there to be a process, a continuum of their learning. So we don't expect or we really shouldn't expect that writing should be any different, that in writing you're going to see attempts and they're not going to be perfect.
00:14:46:09 - 00:15:13:23
Emily Smith
We should not be expecting that kind of perfection right away in terms of spelling or grammar for that matter. I think sometimes as caregivers, as family members. What's challenging is that with writing, there's a record of it. So we see the paper, the artifact that comes out of it. Whereas if you don't replay the missed goal in soccer or the missed note on the piano or whatever it is, you're not listening to it over and over again or watching it over and over again.
00:15:13:23 - 00:15:30:09
Emily Smith
But when there's writing and there's something on the page, there's an artifact, and that can make us, I think, a little bit anxious as family members and caregivers. And so it's a good time to think about how we learn anything as humans is through approximation and attempts. And it's a long continuum.
00:15:30:14 - 00:16:00:07
Kim Brooks
And I'll just add on. I also think spelling is difficult, right? So even with the phonics that we learn. So if I'm starting with the sounds first and I want to make a word with the sound a in it, like the long A, I have multiple letters I can choose from and letter combinations. So A can be obviously a consonant, E or a can be spelled eigh like sleigh, or a can be spelled ay like may, or a can be spelled ai like rain.
00:16:00:07 - 00:16:14:21
Kim Brooks
And I could go on. So it's like we also have to give grace to that. Even when kids are attempting and they know phonics, there's so much to know and so much they could try out in the English language that it becomes difficult.
00:16:14:23 - 00:16:31:10
Amanda Hartman
Sure. And the whole process of writing is a very heavy cognitive load. You're trying to compose an idea, you're trying to keep your idea and remember it. Then you're trying to write it down.
00:16:31:11 - 00:16:37:12
Emily Smith
Yeah. Kim, I think you had some tips. You want to get us started on some of the other some tips you have for spelling?
00:16:37:14 - 00:17:04:01
Kim Brooks
Sure. One tip is just to encourage kids to use rigorous vocabulary, even if they aren't quite spelling accurately yet. Even if they aren't having every single phonics rule spelled out, maybe they're still using inventive spelling. I say don't hold them back. I can give you an example. I was working with some first grade students a couple of weeks ago, and a student was writing an opinion essay about why dogs were better than cats, and she was very proud.
00:17:04:01 - 00:17:22:01
Kim Brooks
She had a claim and reasons that proved why dogs were the best kind of pet. And then she told me, just in conversation, she was worried about her spelling, and I looked through her writing and all of the first grade level words, even some of the second grade level words were spelled accurately, correctly. And it was beautiful work.
00:17:22:01 - 00:17:55:22
Kim Brooks
And then we came to the word guardian, and she mentioned how dogs can be guardians to protect people. And I'm just like, wait, this is a first grader writing an essay with claim and reasons that evidence. And she's worried that the word guardian is misspelled. And it looked a little bit closer to the word garden. But again, just like we would forgive a student just learning if they use a K instead of a C, I just blew past this and just praised her for her use of vocabulary, because she made meaning and got to her point and was so convincing.
00:17:55:22 - 00:18:13:14
Kim Brooks
And that's the kind of writers we want. So just kind of a little scenario of how it might go, and you might see these types of things in your own kids writing at home, right where it's like big words and, you know, it's misspelled, but it's so lofty and it just improves the writing.
00:18:13:14 - 00:18:33:01
Emily Smith
And you don't want the kids to start filtering themselves and saying, oh, I'm only going to write words that I know how to spell with accuracy or conventional spellings, because then I'm not going to write the word guardian or even attempt that. I'm just going to say the dog. Right? And then just think about the loss there. Yeah, yeah.
00:18:33:03 - 00:19:00:20
Emily Smith
Okay. I think that's really helpful for us to think about things. I think for me, you know, I come to this as a parent of two. I also come as a teacher who's worked more often in what we refer to as middle grades, grades three and above. And when I think about some of the practical tips might be ones that we all use as adults as well, if we don't have a tool near us like our phones or a dictionary or something like that.
00:19:00:20 - 00:19:16:05
Emily Smith
But I often will have a go. Like even if you do have a tool near you like a dictionary, this is a really good one. So with the word, if we did want to work on spelling and we were thinking Guardian, okay, well let's see what you got. Let's give it a try. Have a go. And she wrote the word garden.
00:19:16:07 - 00:19:33:19
Emily Smith
We would say, great. Let's now look at this word. And if we really want to work on the spelling of guardian and you're not sure of how it spells, let's look at the word and think. How else could you spell it? So give it a second try. And the second try is going to be different. So you're going to look and you're going to think about other vowels you could put in.
00:19:33:19 - 00:19:50:13
Emily Smith
Sometimes if kids are thinking are there other vowel teams that you could use, or can you say it again and try it another way? And just the point of getting kids to do a second try or a third try on the same word, I think is really helpful for a number of really important reasons. One, you're not just telling them.
00:19:50:15 - 00:20:10:18
Emily Smith
So I'm encouraging the student to be cognitively engaged. So curious. Yeah, let me try this out and see how it goes. So certainly it would be faster to tell, but that doesn't promote learning. That just promotes accuracy. So if we're really trying to help kids learn how to be better spellers, one of the strategies is to try it a few ways.
00:20:10:19 - 00:20:38:22
Emily Smith
The second part of this is as the writer, the student is then in the position of evaluating their choices, their attempts, and more often than not, they get very close by the second or third try because they're trying out some different options, and then they're in essence saying, what's my best option? And they're pretty darn close usually. So I think that's one of the things I would say is a very practical thing is just try it once, tried a second time, try it a third time.
00:20:38:22 - 00:20:55:20
Emily Smith
Which one do you think looks best? And after a couple of minutes then you might say, actually, this word is spelled this way. And you can give the give the spelling. If you're working with a kid at home, or let's check in on my phone or let's look it up in the dictionary, use a tool to have that sense of a little bit of a little bit of work.
00:20:55:22 - 00:21:19:04
Amanda Hartman
Well, I think that goes back to the research. Right. Like you're going to go back to what you know about phonics. You're going to go back to look at what do you know about the sounds? I love that they spelled guardian close to the word garden. And when you say guardian again, guardian has more syllables. Right. So garden has two syllables.
00:21:19:06 - 00:21:40:22
Amanda Hartman
Guardian has three syllables. So if I try it again, say it again. Listen to the parts. And then kids are like, oh, I'm missing this thing. But then looking it up or giving them the accurate spelling. You've done the work of phonemic awareness, you've done the work of phonics. And then and you can't do that with every word.
00:21:40:23 - 00:22:08:01
Amanda Hartman
You have to be selective, right? So this idea of being balanced with the kind of correction or the working on words, if you're a first grader, you might pick a handful. That's a lot. If you're a fourth grader, maybe you can pick a little bit more than a handful, but you don't want to do too many that then, like me, you just give up on it entirely because then there's this expectation of perfect.
00:22:08:01 - 00:22:13:24
Amanda Hartman
But to work on fixing spelling is important. It's an important skill.
00:22:14:01 - 00:22:36:14
Emily Smith
Yeah, I think super easy to implement. I have two more ideas and then we can think about this a little further. One actually goes back, Kim, you mentioned with this student in particular that most of their high frequency words, especially for their grade level, were spelled accurately. And so I do think that's helpful for us also to consider as family members and caregivers.
00:22:36:14 - 00:22:54:21
Emily Smith
And we can ask teachers for that information. And then if there are some high frequency words that are misspelled, one of the things that you might think about is just to focus on one word at a time. So not the long lists of 15 or 20 words on the spelling list. But just to say, let's just work on this one word.
00:22:54:21 - 00:23:20:24
Emily Smith
And if we could get this one high frequency word to the position of standard spelling, that can be helpful. And sometimes what can really help for kids is just to see it a lot. So it might be that you put it on a post-it note and it's like on their home folder. So they see it all the time, or it's like on your refrigerator, it's somewhere visible, and they can just see that word again and again and again and read it repeatedly, and that sort of maps it into their brain and the spelling of it.
00:23:20:24 - 00:23:41:07
Emily Smith
So that can be another, another useful thing. Another thing you might think about is sometimes words are weird. Obviously a lot of times they're weird in the English language. And I think when there are tricky words, we can come up with some memory tricks for them. So I think probably a lot of people know the one about desert and dessert.
00:23:41:07 - 00:24:01:18
Emily Smith
If you are wanting to spell the word dessert, you know that there are two S's because you always want more dessert. So that was a little trick that I've used, and we all can come up with little tricks like that. The classic one is like principal, if you're talking about the school principal is a ‘pal’ versus ‘ple’, because the principal is your pal.
00:24:01:19 - 00:24:31:11
Emily Smith
We all learned little tricks like that, and they're super helpful. We can teach kids to track and use little memory devices as a way to hold on to some of those spellings, and that will just become then ingrained, especially for tricky words. Those are a few strategies to think about in terms of some support at home. And what we're trying to do is just not tell all the time, just engage a little bit, a little bit of cognitive work, a little bit of a little bit of struggle.
00:24:31:11 - 00:24:32:24
Emily Smith
Just enough. Not too much.
00:24:33:00 - 00:24:57:19
Amanda Hartman
Yeah. Some brain work. Yeah. I mean, I'm always thinking about the young ones, but I think even when we think about the older ones as well, sharing, writing or doing writing together. So if we think about that cognitive load, we can think about what parts of writing we can share. So in the classroom we sometimes give like a little dictation.
00:24:57:21 - 00:25:23:06
Amanda Hartman
So I know, like with my nephews, if we're going to go to do a little shopping, I can have my nephew write the list and I can tell him the things that we want to remember to the places where we want to go. And he can write the list. Right. Like that could be a way to share writing or with my nephews.
00:25:23:06 - 00:25:58:07
Amanda Hartman
We may thank you letters to my parents, their grandparents, and we did that together. So we thought about the composition together and we wrote them together. And when my nephew was young, I would write some words and then hand him the pen, and then he would write some words. Literally, sharing the pen can be a, well, one, a fun activity because we're doing it together, but two so that we're lightening the load of writing at home and focusing on the the spelling or the sounds or what we want to say.
00:25:58:08 - 00:26:29:13
Emily Smith
Just enough work, not too much. Yeah. And having that shared pen, that's nice. I would say one last thing on spelling that can be helpful, especially as we're thinking about older kids or as or as kids get older, is the practice of editing and the habit of rereading work and looking at it. So this is again important to know that you're not supposed to get everything right the first time you write something that we all will, whether we're writing by hand or typing, we all will look back at our work and give it an edit.
00:26:29:13 - 00:26:46:19
Emily Smith
I think it's helpful for kids to have that as a mindset that when I'm writing something, I'm going to write it. And then one of the things I can do is spend a few minutes just rereading it and editing it. And another thing I can do is ask someone to do that with me. And so the editing could be I can have the lens of let me edit for spelling, let me just check.
00:26:46:23 - 00:27:09:08
Emily Smith
I know there are a few words that were tricky as I was spelling it. It sounds like that first grader Kim that you were working with was already in that mindset. She knew she had the lens of I need to look my spelling as a writer, and that's the kind of thing we want to instill in kids as well, that this is a process that you will often go through is just to check your work, and that sometimes another reader can help you with that.
00:27:09:09 - 00:27:22:04
Amanda Hartman
I mean, 100% for both things, for spelling and grammar. Rereading, writing is huge. Such an important thing to do with your with your kiddos.
00:27:22:05 - 00:27:45:06
Emily Smith
And actually, Amanda, just to take your example of the letters that are going to the grandparents. While I'm sure your grandparents are going to be, any grandparent, receiving a note from their grandchild is probably going to be completely loving and excited and keep that forever. And it's when you're writing something that's going to go to somebody else, you might have a little bit more of a lens on writing it with more standard spelling.
00:27:45:06 - 00:27:47:19
Emily Smith
I want to say you might have, depending on your age.
00:27:47:19 - 00:27:48:18
Amanda Hartman
So that someone else.
00:27:48:18 - 00:28:00:00
Emily Smith
Can read it so that someone else can read it. Whereas if you're writing a grocery list and you're going to go to the grocery store, it's a little less important that every word on that grocery list is spelled correctly. If you can read it and figure out what you need.
00:28:00:02 - 00:28:01:14
Amanda Hartman
Yes, yes.
00:28:01:20 - 00:28:03:01
Emily Smith
I think it's age dependent.
00:28:03:02 - 00:28:29:23
Amanda Hartman
For sure, and I like that advice. Check in with your teachers. Like what is too much? What is not enough? It's a myth that spelling should just be whatever you want, correct? Right? And always check it in with the teacher of what is really in the range of where your child is. That feels like, oh, I should be expecting that at home is always helpful.
00:28:30:00 - 00:28:56:05
Emily Smith
Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. We've talked a lot about spelling. We want to devote time also to grammar. Obviously we've put them together in this podcast. But grammar, the distinction there is just helpful maybe for us to say that's punctuation like periods, capitals, quotation marks, commas. It's practices around the use of punctuation marks, but also around capitalization of letters around any of those.
00:28:56:07 - 00:29:10:23
Emily Smith
The syntax of sentences like how you combine sentences sometimes with a semicolon or with a dash, or include information or embed information with parentheses, all that sort of stuff. That's what we were thinking about when we think about grammar.
00:29:11:00 - 00:29:29:00
Amanda Hartman
And is reflective of your language practices, and that in writing can be read and understood. So the syntax, the order of words is also really important piece of grammar as well.
00:29:29:02 - 00:29:49:09
Kim Brooks
Right. And it's not just knowing the parts of speech and labeling it, but it's like so I can put them in sentences functionally, both when I'm speaking and when I'm writing, just like you said, because it's all about communication. There's a little bit of research I wanted to share again with families and caregivers thinking about stages of grammar.
00:29:49:09 - 00:30:09:18
Kim Brooks
And like I said before, we could get very technical and in the weeds. And so instead, I thought we'd pull it out just to think through what are these stages that kids go through? And it's not necessarily linear, so to speak. They can like go forward, go back a little bit as they kind of continue to learn. So the first stage and this is from Constance Weaver's work.
00:30:09:18 - 00:30:29:24
Kim Brooks
What's funny is a lot of this is true for many things we learn not just in grammar, but specifically she talks about the recognition or immersion stage. And this is like an invisible stage. And she writes that most of our literary language is acquired before six years old, which feels really powerful.
00:30:30:00 - 00:30:31:04
Emily Smith
Shocking, really. Yeah, yeah.
00:30:31:05 - 00:30:53:05
Kim Brooks
And it also comes from being read too, and I would add being spoken to. So the importance of reading aloud to kids, and this is something I think we probably would recommend to all family and caregivers every night as much as you can. This hands over both literary and academic language. And then it has repeated practice and exposure to words.
00:30:53:05 - 00:31:21:11
Kim Brooks
And they're hearing that syntax that we spoke of. They're hearing how sentences are formed. Sometimes sentences are long and winding, and they might have things called conjunctions, right. That we we can teach into. Sometimes sentences are short and choppy. And then how is the English language put together and used is sort of this stage. She also goes on to say that most kids learn 80% of the of the language that they'll use their entire lifetime by six years old.
00:31:21:15 - 00:31:50:07
Kim Brooks
So again, powerful work that can happen even before they enter school with some lap reading. The next stage is approximation and we say embrace this stage. They're very tricky rules like we mentioned with spelling. Same thing with grammar. So at this stage students use and confuse. There might be run ons in their writing. And again, as parents and caregivers you need to think through what's that balance of feedback?
00:31:50:07 - 00:32:11:07
Kim Brooks
When am I having them correct things versus when is it okay to be a little inaccurate to boost the writing and the cognitive load Amanda talked about really happens here too. As writing continues and they're learning more about the processes of writing and the complexity of writing. It could be that, like I forgot a period at the end of my sentence.
00:32:11:07 - 00:32:16:05
Kim Brooks
It doesn't mean I don't know that periods exist, but I just forgot to do it.
00:32:16:06 - 00:32:40:24
Emily Smith
Yeah. And even if we take that approximation, we were talking about that with the spelling again, to go back to the guardian example. Now let's take that to grammar. Like if kids are using run on sentences, that's great because then that means their thoughts are getting more complicated. Instead of having very simple sentences, they're going to have lengthier ones that might have some conjunctions and relationships among them, but just even lists, they've got like a list in there.
00:32:40:24 - 00:32:46:11
Emily Smith
And that's more syntactic complexity, which is something we're aiming for in our kids writing.
00:32:46:13 - 00:33:11:02
Kim Brooks
Right, so again, they can use confuse and like play around with the language too. Then the next stage is mastery. And you can imagine this is like okay I understand this and I have a command of this skill and I'm using it well often. And it goes again beyond just identifying parts of speech and actually transferred into both their speaking and their writing on the page.
00:33:11:02 - 00:33:34:22
Kim Brooks
And then what's funny is this fourth stage, because you would think I got it, I'm done. But it doesn't really work like that whenever we learn things. So we're moving through these stages, we've mastered it. And then there might be the slippage stage, right. So what does it look like again. Because some things get more complex. I now have more difficult writing assignments.
00:33:34:23 - 00:33:55:08
Kim Brooks
All of a sudden I have to write this argument essay that's multiple pages. I have to have claim and reasons and evidence. And it has to be about this text that I just read. All of this means that sometimes there's slippage in certain skills, and in this case it could be grammar, but it could be applied to other parts of learning to.
00:33:55:10 - 00:34:25:10
Emily Smith
Yeah. And I think that's I think that's helpful for us to remember that when kids are challenged in, in one area, there might be a little slippage in something else. I also think it's interesting for us to consider context within this. So sometimes if we're writing to family and friends via text message or grammar and conventions may be a little looser because it's a text, it's not a letter that we're sending that's more formal.
00:34:25:10 - 00:34:48:20
Emily Smith
So I think it's important for us to consider that piece of things as well. The context within which we're using writing is, of course, one of the things that will shape how we make decisions about how we write, but also how much we edit. And oftentimes we're sending things quickly, and that's fine. Those are decisions that people make.
00:34:48:22 - 00:34:53:13
Emily Smith
Okay, Kim, you've got some other practical tips for us to, right, about some of the grammar work?
00:34:53:15 - 00:35:16:14
Kim Brooks
I do, I'll just start with one is just based on that research. What we know about that recognition immersion stage is to talk more and read aloud more at home, even for older kids. I can't stress enough that older kids can also be read aloud to, because often they get to this stage where they can read independently and it's like, go over there and read.
00:35:16:15 - 00:35:31:20
Kim Brooks
But again, they need to hear it. They need to hear adult in their households and in their communities speak. They also need to hear how authors put words together. So again, just read aloud as much as you can. And I think that goes really far.
00:35:31:22 - 00:35:33:12
Emily Smith
Yeah, absolutely.
00:35:33:13 - 00:35:36:10
Amanda Hartman
We might talk about that on every podcast.
00:35:36:12 - 00:35:38:04
Emily Smith
Every time, read aloud as much as you can.
00:35:38:04 - 00:35:39:15
Amanda Hartman
I think we might.
00:35:39:16 - 00:36:02:23
Emily Smith
Have conversations about things as much as you can. All of these things will help. Because even just talking about that, if if your student asks you to help them with their writing, and I think that's actually an important thing that as family members and caregivers were hoping for that invitation, we're not inserting ourselves into their school writing. I think about this a little bit more again for older kids.
00:36:02:23 - 00:36:22:08
Emily Smith
But if your student comes to you and is asking for a little bit of help, then I think there are a couple of things you could do. One of them is just to look for patterns like what do you notice about the work that's at hand? And so if you see a page of writing, let's just imagine there's a page of writing.
00:36:22:08 - 00:36:47:03
Emily Smith
And there aren't periods or question marks or exclamation points. One of the things that you might do is just ask a question about it, “So tell me about your use of periods and exclamation marks and question marks, like, what are you thinking about that?” Because the student will be like, oh, right, I'm supposed to do that? And so then that gets the conversation going, well, let's figure out how would you make decisions about where you're going to put those end marks.
00:36:47:03 - 00:37:12:00
Amanda Hartman
Yeah, I mean that's being curious as the parent and caregiver. Like I'm going to be curious about this to see what you know about it, to see if that activates something in you. And it also gets the child to do the work, which is always a nice thing to reflect on. Like who's doing the work, I am fixing everything in your writing,
00:37:12:02 - 00:37:22:03
Amanda Hartman
or are you looking at what you can fix in your writing with maybe some guidance, some suggestions and key questions.
00:37:22:05 - 00:37:45:07
Emily Smith
Absolutely. And then I think if you notice a pattern, always talk to your child's teacher. Like maybe they haven't learned this yet. So that could be something. And if you notice something that you know, they have learned, I think again looking at patterns, I'm a teacher, a teacher mom, so this might not be a perfect example, but my 13 year old did come to me within the last year.
00:37:45:07 - 00:38:08:21
Emily Smith
She was working on the literary essay, and she asked me to read it and give her some support with it before she turned it in. And one of the things that I noticed was that the proper nouns were like, all wacky. And it's actually you think, oh, capitalized names. But that's not actually so easy, because if you're saying, Coach Morris, do you capitalize the C in coach, do you capitalize?
00:38:08:22 - 00:38:33:11
Emily Smith
You know, Morris, you know, do you capitalize the M. Yes, you do. But she wasn't necessarily sure about all of those quote unquote rules. So having conversations about any aspect of grammar or something that you're noticing could be another way to look at this. Again, looking for patterns and seeing how do we have some conversations about this and recognize the complexity of it, because there were times when I was looking at her work and I was like, I'm not sure about that.
00:38:33:12 - 00:38:48:11
Emily Smith
You know, let's look at what other people have done to see how that's treated, or let's look it up and figure it out again, treating it a little bit like a puzzle as opposed to this is just something you're supposed to know. Let's get interested. Build some curiosity there.
00:38:48:13 - 00:38:53:15
Amanda Hartman
Yeah, that's really nice. That's really nice.
00:38:53:17 - 00:39:23:01
Amanda Hartman
Yeah. I mean, I think that back to that idea of talking with kids about what they want to write before they write, also can support the grammar that they're going to say, I was working with some, some fourth graders this week, and the teacher was like, the kids have great ideas, but when I look at their writing, I can't really tell what their ideas are.
00:39:23:03 - 00:39:46:13
Amanda Hartman
It feels like it's jumbled, you know? So I was like, well, let's practice saying what we want to write before we write it. And, you know, we call that the rehearsal. And so practicing what we want to say, how we want to say it and then writing it and then taking your advice and rereading it and then thinking about the next thing.
00:39:46:13 - 00:39:57:04
Amanda Hartman
For some of us, it can be helpful to break it into bits and parts, and that also can work on the clarity of your messaging of what you want to say.
00:39:57:06 - 00:40:21:10
Emily Smith
Absolutely. Always the relationship between our oral language development, the way that we talk and enter into conversations, and then what happens on the page is so important. Okay. I think, of course, the other thing we want to say with any of our we want to say practical tips. What are the things we're doing? Keep it positive. If a student's becoming frustrated, it's not going to be productive.
00:40:21:10 - 00:40:39:21
Emily Smith
So if things are going badly and the energy of your student is waning, if they're feeling frustrated, then I would say, take a break. We don't want writing to be something that becomes a major frustration. And of course, talk to your child's teacher. Amanda, I think we're ready to talk books, right?
00:40:39:22 - 00:40:41:14
Amanda Hartman
I love to talk about books.
00:40:41:14 - 00:40:45:00
Emily Smith
You do, and you're amazing. You've got a lot to share today with us.
00:40:45:05 - 00:40:46:06
Amanda Hartman
It’s my favorite section.
00:40:46:07 - 00:40:48:14
Emily Smith
Yeah. Will you give us some book recommendations?
00:40:48:15 - 00:41:17:04
Amanda Hartman
Surely. So I wanted to talk a little bit about our 2026 prize winning books for some particular prizes. It's not every prize that has been given out by the ALA, but here are some. So I thought I would highlight them, and it's always nice to just see what's being celebrated. Some people like to follow prizes and try to read the books on the prizes.
00:41:17:04 - 00:41:55:07
Amanda Hartman
That can be fun. And I have some selections that are young adult, middle grade, and also some picture books. And so these are all new titles. So I'm going to start with the Newbery Award winning novel All the Blues in the Sky by Renee Watson, and this is a book that I've actually read. It's a beautiful book. They call it a heartfelt story about a young person who has really lost someone really important in her life, and how she deals with that grief.
00:41:55:10 - 00:42:04:17
Amanda Hartman
And it's a beautiful novel. It deserves all the accolades and wonderful for middle grade and YA for for sure.
00:42:04:17 - 00:42:17:03
Emily Smith
Those Newbery Award winning books, I mean, can't you picture them, all the ones that you read that you lived within those books? So I just feel like anytime you've got a Newbery Medal or even a runner up there, it's going to be a good one.
00:42:17:05 - 00:42:47:20
Amanda Hartman
I mean, thank you for saying that because there's so many also ones that are in the honor, books that are also beautiful and amazing. And then I have two from the Coretta Scott King Awards for illustration, The Library in the Woods, which is exactly that, a hidden library in the woods. And then Will's Race from Home by Jewell Parker Rhodes, who, you know, is another middle grade author who is quite prolific in the field in children's literature.
00:42:47:20 - 00:42:56:20
Amanda Hartman
And this is historical fiction for the race for land in the late 1800s in Oklahoma.
00:42:56:21 - 00:43:17:04
Emily Smith
I just want to make a little plug on those. Like the Newbery, of course, is for writing. And usually I think we think of it as plot. But all of the grammar structures and syntax and all of that that's in those novels is wonderful. And anytime you've got historical fiction, you usually have more interesting syntax and dialects and the language use that really encourages more complexity.
00:43:17:04 - 00:43:25:12
Emily Smith
So it goes back to this idea of we're reading rich books to kids or with kids that's going to support their grammar development.
00:43:25:14 - 00:43:55:03
Amanda Hartman
Yeah. Wonderful. Legendary Frybread Drive-In is the the winner of the Printz Award, which is specifically for young adults. And I loved this one. Also about indigenous families and the tradition, families and traditions of running a family business together. It's a it's a fun book. I've read that one as well. And then I also included the Pura Belpré Award winners.
00:43:55:05 - 00:44:30:07
Amanda Hartman
The Pecan Sheller, also another historical fiction book about labor history here in the in the US, and Popo the Xolo, which is a story that comes from indigenous Mexican traditions and is about like the tech underworld, a beautiful picture book. And then the last one is Fireworks, which won the Caldecott, and the Caldecott is an award for illustrations. So yeah.
00:44:30:07 - 00:44:48:24
Amanda Hartman
So some some new books to look at. Also some awards to follow and to maybe even research, other books that are mentioned on those lists, and to even go back to the 2025 ones or the 2024. That can be a fun thing to do as well.
00:44:49:00 - 00:44:53:05
Emily Smith
Yeah, and I love that we've got nonfiction in there too, for our nonfiction kids. Yeah.
00:44:53:06 - 00:44:54:16
Amanda Hartman
100%.
00:44:54:21 - 00:44:59:12
Emily Smith
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Kim. Amanda, it's been great.
00:44:59:13 - 00:45:26:08
Amanda Hartman
Well, thank you all for listening to our series Advancing Literacy Beyond the Classroom. We hope that this continues to spark curiosity and conversations outside the classroom with your kids, and supports the growth and enjoyment. Remember, literacy isn't just the books they read in school. It's about the stories we share, the world we explore, and the conversations we have. To stay connected with our community,
00:45:26:09 - 00:45:58:07
Amanda Hartman
you can head over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite podcasts, to follow our series, and to catch our new episodes each month. If you find value in these conversations, please leave us a five star rating and a review and share the show with someone you think would also enjoy the journey. You can also find our next live workshops on our website, AdvancingLiteracy.tc.columbia.edu.
00:45:58:09 - 00:46:22:04
Amanda Hartman
Please also share this information with others in your community. All are welcome and if you are interested in bringing professional development to your family, schools or district, please email us. We hope you join us again. Keep advancing literacy. One word, one book, and one conversation at a time.
Emily Smith
Welcome to Advancing Literacy Beyond the Classroom. This podcast is for families and caregivers to support the literacy learning that goes on outside of school. We welcome all of you to join us to make learning fun and purposeful. We know that literacy learning is a life thing and not just a school thing. As family members and caregivers, we know that your role is central to your kids literacy development.
00:00:31:21 - 00:00:44:03
Emily Smith
You may have young children, kids, pre-teens, and or young adults. We have recommendations to support their literacy journey. Let's get started. I'm Emily Smith.
00:00:44:05 - 00:01:10:22
Kim Brooks
I'm Amanda Hartman, and I'm Kim Brooks. We're staff developers at Advancing Literacy at Teachers College in New York City. We're a center within the Teacher Education and Community Partnerships Division, providing professional development for school districts in the NYC metro area across the country and worldwide. This school year, we will be offering over 20 free workshops for families, caregivers, and educators.
00:01:11:00 - 00:01:22:13
Kim Brooks
You can find our events and future workshops on our social media pages at TCAdvancingLit and our website AdvancingLiteracy.tc.columbia.edu
00:01:22:15 - 00:01:23:09
Kim Brooks
00:01:23:11 - 00:01:35:08
Emily Smith
Thanks, Kim, and thanks, Amanda. I'm glad we're all together today. We usually start with our title and talk a little bit about what the title means and why this topic matters. Kim, what are some of your thoughts?
00:01:35:09 - 00:02:01:08
Kim Brooks
So our title today is Practical and Positive Strategies to Support Grammar and Spelling Development. It's kind of a mouthful, but I think it's a really important topic because it's interesting that caregivers might remember how they were taught spelling and grammar when they were in school. I'm envisioning lists that were handed out on a Monday, memorized that week, and then tested on Friday, or grammar worksheets where you might circle every now and underline every verb.
00:02:01:09 - 00:02:18:02
Kim Brooks
And you might not know why. Right. So those are my memories, at least when I was taught. And when I think about it, I was a really good memory. I could even do the bonus words each week, but I don't know that I was actually taught how to spell phonetically. I'm just curious how you remember spelling and grammar.
00:02:18:03 - 00:02:19:04
Kim Brooks
Was it the same for you?
00:02:19:05 - 00:02:40:01
Emily Smith
I feel like that was an exact match to my experience. It was all about the list that came on Monday, the pretest that I failed miserably, and then the post-test where I probably got 100% because I was dutiful and I memorized the words for the test, and then probably within hours, was misspelling those words in other writing tasks.
00:02:40:01 - 00:02:51:08
Emily Smith
So I had very little retention of any of the work that was happening there. And I don't remember any instruction about how to spell. It was just a test. Amanda, what about you?
00:02:51:09 - 00:02:53:04
Amanda Hartman
Yeah, I appreciate.
00:02:53:04 - 00:02:54:11
Amanda Hartman
All of that.
00:02:54:12 - 00:03:22:23
Amanda Hartman
It really highlights the importance of reapplying what we learn. It makes us really think about what is learning mean. And researchers like widely Blevins, who studies phonics and spelling, emphasizes that in early literacy, to acquire it, you have to be able to do it both out of context and in context. So that feels really important in the learning process.
00:03:23:03 - 00:03:54:00
Amanda Hartman
But here, like in our title where we have positive experiences, not just practical but positive. I remember having so many negative experiences of just all the things that I did wrong, and just what that does to me as a learner wanting to do more. It kind of shuts down. It can shut down your creativity and the actual practice of it.
00:03:54:00 - 00:03:59:04
Amanda Hartman
So that really stands out to me in the title.
00:03:59:06 - 00:04:27:21
Emily Smith
Yeah. I think one of the most important things for us to keep in mind is that when we're talking and to really keep at the forefront of this, when we're talking about spelling and grammar, we're really thinking about communication and that we want kids to be able to share ideas, their opinions, their thoughts, their stories. We want them to be able to share all of this through writing so that other people can read and understand their work.
00:04:27:22 - 00:04:53:00
Emily Smith
And then I also think it's important to think that this is a continuum of learning. This is not just something that you learn in elementary school, but that you are continuing to learn about spelling and grammar. If it's a little bit different than vocabulary, I think you're constantly learning vocabulary, and probably there is a bit of an end point and you're learning about grammar structures, but you can still be curious and explore them in all sorts of ways as an adult.
00:04:53:03 - 00:05:32:16
Amanda Hartman
Well, and I think that idea, particularly as caregivers, to remember why and remembering the why then also can guide my practice of working with children. So spelling. Why is it important to spell or to spell in conventional ways is so that other people can read it? And to remember that even in a language like English, where it's spoken worldwide from different countries to different dialects, even on the page can be spelled differently.
00:05:32:16 - 00:06:06:01
Amanda Hartman
So that becomes really important to remember and to keep at the center. Spelling and writing is for communicating. Same with grammar. Right. Why do we have grammar is so that our ideas can be conveyed in clear ways. So how do we communicate those ideas, both in our oral language and in our in our written language? So to remember that it's not just is this right or wrong, it's why do we do this is to communicate with others, right?
00:06:06:02 - 00:06:25:04
Emily Smith
Right. To communicate. Great. I think that gives us a little perspective on our title and our topic. And the next thing we typically do in this podcast is to turn to research. And what are some key points that we want to highlight in terms of research? Kim, I think you had some things for us to think about on that topic.
00:06:25:09 - 00:06:49:05
Kim Brooks
Yeah. So when I was putting together some research, I was thinking about the audience of family and caregivers and what could be practical, what could be positive, and without getting to in the weeds with educational terms. So some of my research is coming from Tim Shanahan's work, and this blog post is debating explicit spelling instruction versus invented spelling.
00:06:49:05 - 00:07:19:16
Kim Brooks
And so he uses other researchers out there to prove both sides to the story. Right. So we almost need this hybrid approach to explicit teaching based on the phonics that goes into spelling. And we'll talk about that in a minute, but also allowing students to use that invented spelling, like you said. So it doesn't feel like I can't spell words that I don't know to improve my writing, because I'm going to be closed into this sort of box of only the words I can spell accurately.
00:07:19:17 - 00:07:40:21
Kim Brooks
So here's some of the research he says, “Explicit teaching and spelling improves spelling and increases the vocabulary diversity in student writing.” So obviously we want to teach explicitly. The spelling will then improve. But the payoff is not just for spilling. The payoff is for other vocabulary that they can then use, I would say in their writing, but also in their speaking.
00:07:40:22 - 00:08:03:16
Kim Brooks
Right. And then “inventive spelling, together with alphabetic knowledge and phonemic awareness, influence reading and spelling development.” So again, not to get too cumbersome with educational terms, but just that when we provide this instruction on phonics, the encoding of spelling, and then we put it together with some of those other skills that we want kids to learn and be able to do that.
00:08:03:16 - 00:08:06:00
Kim Brooks
It improves overall reading as well.
00:08:06:01 - 00:08:23:12
Emily Smith
And I think that might be a good spot to talk about. What does it mean when we say invented spelling? People might use the term invented or inventive. When you hear that term. For me, it means that kids are giving it their best shot. They're like saying the word listening for sounds, and we'll talk more about that. But but they're trying.
00:08:23:14 - 00:08:24:11
Emily Smith
Right, right.
00:08:24:12 - 00:08:50:11
Amanda Hartman
Yeah. When kids are approximating spelling, they are trying to give their best shot. And I think that piece of research really shows is that the work of stretching out sounds, to hear them discretely and to hear them so well that you're like, oh, I know that letter. And now I'm going to put it down the best that I can.
00:08:50:13 - 00:09:20:24
Amanda Hartman
That whole process is foundational to writing later on, reading later on. So just that work of being able to stretch out, hear the sounds and for kids to be able to do that and then attach it to a letter. So what the research has shown is that approximated spelling or inventive spelling, is one of the number one ways to work on that idea of phonemic awareness.
00:09:21:00 - 00:09:22:08
Emily Smith
Yeah.
00:09:22:10 - 00:09:47:20
Kim Brooks
And then just the last bit of research, again, coming out of the Shanahan blog, was that “explicit spelling instruction improves spelling,” but also improves “reading and writing”. And I think sometimes we think reading and writing improves spelling. And that makes sense. But then the reverse is also true. Better spelling instruction can improve reading and writing. So I thought that was really interesting that it all comes as a package together.
00:09:47:22 - 00:10:09:12
Kim Brooks
So after we kind of thought through explicit teaching where I'm teaching the phonics versus the inventive or invented spelling, I thought it'd be helpful to show the process of what spelling actually is. Again, sort of in layman's terms of you mentioned the sounds and stretching out the sounds. So to start with spelling, really we need to back up and really start with reading.
00:10:09:12 - 00:10:28:19
Kim Brooks
So what does decoding look like when I need to read a word. So I have the word cat in front of me. I might not know its cat yet. A lot has to happen in my brain for me to recognize that that is the word cat. But I see on the page these formations and we know those are called C, A and T.
00:10:28:21 - 00:10:55:10
Kim Brooks
And then what I have to do is map each letter to a sound that it makes. And this is where the phonics comes in. It's that letter sound correspondence. So I'm thinking to myself, a c might have a /k/ sound at the beginning of the word, an a lot of times when it's in the middle of a word like this, it has a short sound, so it may be /a/, and then the t I can clip off and say /t/ so together.
00:10:55:10 - 00:11:17:23
Kim Brooks
If I slide through those sounds and put them together, I might be thinking, /k/, /a/, /t/, cat, right? And then it doesn't stop there, because then I have to know, oh, that word that I just did all of that process for is actually a thing. And it's four legged creature that I know that's like different than a dog, right?
00:11:17:23 - 00:11:38:16
Kim Brooks
That I could have as a pet. So all of that has to happen when we read, and we want that to become automatic. And that sort of starting with the letters, going through the sounds, blending those sounds together and finding the word. Well, spelling is the opposite process of that. It's still part of phonics, but it's like the other side of the coin, so to speak.
00:11:38:17 - 00:12:01:14
Kim Brooks
So when I have encoding, which is the opposite of decoding. So this is just spelling, I'm doing it in reverse. I'm thinking to myself, I want to write this sentence with the word cat. And it's in my head the cat was black and I know the word cat. And I can say the word cat, right? That's the sound first, as opposed to the letters first.
00:12:01:14 - 00:12:27:08
Kim Brooks
And then I want to think, okay, Cat, what do I hear? What do I hear? /k/ /k/ /k/ And I could think to myself, like, my name is Kim, so /k/ starts with a K. That might be like a phonetically accurate but not not spelling accuracy. Way to do it. But let's just, for the sake of it say I know that /k/ makes a C letter C, and that sound is made by the letter C, and then /k/ /a/.
00:12:27:10 - 00:12:47:19
Kim Brooks
Okay that's an A. Got it. Write it down cat. Oh that's a T write it down. And now I've formed the word cat. And of course I have to have my handwriting and I have to know how to form those letters. But now I've taken the sound of the word cat and segmented. Segmented it then matched it with letters.
00:12:47:19 - 00:12:56:02
Kim Brooks
And now I've written the word cat. So again, a lot happens in our brains to be able to just spell the word cat and put it on paper.
00:12:56:04 - 00:13:19:23
Emily Smith
Absolutely. And if an early writer wrote Kate, and especially if their name was Kim, right. And wrote Kat and expected us to be able to read it as Cat we would be. Especially if they're just learning to read and write. We would accept that as an invented spelling. And they were practicing their letter sound combinations and segmenting and then blending things back together.
00:13:19:23 - 00:13:20:24
Amanda Hartman
So. Correct.
00:13:21:00 - 00:13:42:01
Amanda Hartman
Yeah, yeah. And if I haven't learned the short a sound, I don't know what letter you know that there is. I might just write C and T. And again there's work to do there. Right. But as an approximator I'm using what I know about phonics to help me in that early writing.
00:13:42:02 - 00:14:01:16
Emily Smith
And I think it might be helpful here just to bring a little bit of perspective for families and caregivers. Again, we're thinking about this outside of the school day and when we want kids to be comfortable writing at home, we want it to feel positive. And it could be useful to think about this in context of how kids learn other things.
00:14:01:16 - 00:14:21:24
Emily Smith
So if you consider again, your kids might be learning to play a sport, or they might be learning to play an instrument, or they might learn even to do something like how to bake cookies in the kitchen with you. You don't get upset if they spill a little flour or if they pour the wet ingredients in with the dry ones before they're supposed to.
00:14:22:00 - 00:14:46:09
Emily Smith
You sort of manage and keep going. And if they're learning to play soccer and they kick the ball out of bounds, or they miss the goal or there's not a big fuss about it, you're expecting there to be a process, a continuum of their learning. So we don't expect or we really shouldn't expect that writing should be any different, that in writing you're going to see attempts and they're not going to be perfect.
00:14:46:09 - 00:15:13:23
Emily Smith
We should not be expecting that kind of perfection right away in terms of spelling or grammar for that matter. I think sometimes as caregivers, as family members. What's challenging is that with writing, there's a record of it. So we see the paper, the artifact that comes out of it. Whereas if you don't replay the missed goal in soccer or the missed note on the piano or whatever it is, you're not listening to it over and over again or watching it over and over again.
00:15:13:23 - 00:15:30:09
Emily Smith
But when there's writing and there's something on the page, there's an artifact, and that can make us, I think, a little bit anxious as family members and caregivers. And so it's a good time to think about how we learn anything as humans is through approximation and attempts. And it's a long continuum.
00:15:30:14 - 00:16:00:07
Kim Brooks
And I'll just add on. I also think spelling is difficult, right? So even with the phonics that we learn. So if I'm starting with the sounds first and I want to make a word with the sound a in it, like the long A, I have multiple letters I can choose from and letter combinations. So A can be obviously a consonant, E or a can be spelled eigh like sleigh, or a can be spelled ay like may, or a can be spelled ai like rain.
00:16:00:07 - 00:16:14:21
Kim Brooks
And I could go on. So it's like we also have to give grace to that. Even when kids are attempting and they know phonics, there's so much to know and so much they could try out in the English language that it becomes difficult.
00:16:14:23 - 00:16:31:10
Amanda Hartman
Sure. And the whole process of writing is a very heavy cognitive load. You're trying to compose an idea, you're trying to keep your idea and remember it. Then you're trying to write it down.
00:16:31:11 - 00:16:37:12
Emily Smith
Yeah. Kim, I think you had some tips. You want to get us started on some of the other some tips you have for spelling?
00:16:37:14 - 00:17:04:01
Kim Brooks
Sure. One tip is just to encourage kids to use rigorous vocabulary, even if they aren't quite spelling accurately yet. Even if they aren't having every single phonics rule spelled out, maybe they're still using inventive spelling. I say don't hold them back. I can give you an example. I was working with some first grade students a couple of weeks ago, and a student was writing an opinion essay about why dogs were better than cats, and she was very proud.
00:17:04:01 - 00:17:22:01
Kim Brooks
She had a claim and reasons that proved why dogs were the best kind of pet. And then she told me, just in conversation, she was worried about her spelling, and I looked through her writing and all of the first grade level words, even some of the second grade level words were spelled accurately, correctly. And it was beautiful work.
00:17:22:01 - 00:17:55:22
Kim Brooks
And then we came to the word guardian, and she mentioned how dogs can be guardians to protect people. And I'm just like, wait, this is a first grader writing an essay with claim and reasons that evidence. And she's worried that the word guardian is misspelled. And it looked a little bit closer to the word garden. But again, just like we would forgive a student just learning if they use a K instead of a C, I just blew past this and just praised her for her use of vocabulary, because she made meaning and got to her point and was so convincing.
00:17:55:22 - 00:18:13:14
Kim Brooks
And that's the kind of writers we want. So just kind of a little scenario of how it might go, and you might see these types of things in your own kids writing at home, right where it's like big words and, you know, it's misspelled, but it's so lofty and it just improves the writing.
00:18:13:14 - 00:18:33:01
Emily Smith
And you don't want the kids to start filtering themselves and saying, oh, I'm only going to write words that I know how to spell with accuracy or conventional spellings, because then I'm not going to write the word guardian or even attempt that. I'm just going to say the dog. Right? And then just think about the loss there. Yeah, yeah.
00:18:33:03 - 00:19:00:20
Emily Smith
Okay. I think that's really helpful for us to think about things. I think for me, you know, I come to this as a parent of two. I also come as a teacher who's worked more often in what we refer to as middle grades, grades three and above. And when I think about some of the practical tips might be ones that we all use as adults as well, if we don't have a tool near us like our phones or a dictionary or something like that.
00:19:00:20 - 00:19:16:05
Emily Smith
But I often will have a go. Like even if you do have a tool near you like a dictionary, this is a really good one. So with the word, if we did want to work on spelling and we were thinking Guardian, okay, well let's see what you got. Let's give it a try. Have a go. And she wrote the word garden.
00:19:16:07 - 00:19:33:19
Emily Smith
We would say, great. Let's now look at this word. And if we really want to work on the spelling of guardian and you're not sure of how it spells, let's look at the word and think. How else could you spell it? So give it a second try. And the second try is going to be different. So you're going to look and you're going to think about other vowels you could put in.
00:19:33:19 - 00:19:50:13
Emily Smith
Sometimes if kids are thinking are there other vowel teams that you could use, or can you say it again and try it another way? And just the point of getting kids to do a second try or a third try on the same word, I think is really helpful for a number of really important reasons. One, you're not just telling them.
00:19:50:15 - 00:20:10:18
Emily Smith
So I'm encouraging the student to be cognitively engaged. So curious. Yeah, let me try this out and see how it goes. So certainly it would be faster to tell, but that doesn't promote learning. That just promotes accuracy. So if we're really trying to help kids learn how to be better spellers, one of the strategies is to try it a few ways.
00:20:10:19 - 00:20:38:22
Emily Smith
The second part of this is as the writer, the student is then in the position of evaluating their choices, their attempts, and more often than not, they get very close by the second or third try because they're trying out some different options, and then they're in essence saying, what's my best option? And they're pretty darn close usually. So I think that's one of the things I would say is a very practical thing is just try it once, tried a second time, try it a third time.
00:20:38:22 - 00:20:55:20
Emily Smith
Which one do you think looks best? And after a couple of minutes then you might say, actually, this word is spelled this way. And you can give the give the spelling. If you're working with a kid at home, or let's check in on my phone or let's look it up in the dictionary, use a tool to have that sense of a little bit of a little bit of work.
00:20:55:22 - 00:21:19:04
Amanda Hartman
Well, I think that goes back to the research. Right. Like you're going to go back to what you know about phonics. You're going to go back to look at what do you know about the sounds? I love that they spelled guardian close to the word garden. And when you say guardian again, guardian has more syllables. Right. So garden has two syllables.
00:21:19:06 - 00:21:40:22
Amanda Hartman
Guardian has three syllables. So if I try it again, say it again. Listen to the parts. And then kids are like, oh, I'm missing this thing. But then looking it up or giving them the accurate spelling. You've done the work of phonemic awareness, you've done the work of phonics. And then and you can't do that with every word.
00:21:40:23 - 00:22:08:01
Amanda Hartman
You have to be selective, right? So this idea of being balanced with the kind of correction or the working on words, if you're a first grader, you might pick a handful. That's a lot. If you're a fourth grader, maybe you can pick a little bit more than a handful, but you don't want to do too many that then, like me, you just give up on it entirely because then there's this expectation of perfect.
00:22:08:01 - 00:22:13:24
Amanda Hartman
But to work on fixing spelling is important. It's an important skill.
00:22:14:01 - 00:22:36:14
Emily Smith
Yeah, I think super easy to implement. I have two more ideas and then we can think about this a little further. One actually goes back, Kim, you mentioned with this student in particular that most of their high frequency words, especially for their grade level, were spelled accurately. And so I do think that's helpful for us also to consider as family members and caregivers.
00:22:36:14 - 00:22:54:21
Emily Smith
And we can ask teachers for that information. And then if there are some high frequency words that are misspelled, one of the things that you might think about is just to focus on one word at a time. So not the long lists of 15 or 20 words on the spelling list. But just to say, let's just work on this one word.
00:22:54:21 - 00:23:20:24
Emily Smith
And if we could get this one high frequency word to the position of standard spelling, that can be helpful. And sometimes what can really help for kids is just to see it a lot. So it might be that you put it on a post-it note and it's like on their home folder. So they see it all the time, or it's like on your refrigerator, it's somewhere visible, and they can just see that word again and again and again and read it repeatedly, and that sort of maps it into their brain and the spelling of it.
00:23:20:24 - 00:23:41:07
Emily Smith
So that can be another, another useful thing. Another thing you might think about is sometimes words are weird. Obviously a lot of times they're weird in the English language. And I think when there are tricky words, we can come up with some memory tricks for them. So I think probably a lot of people know the one about desert and dessert.
00:23:41:07 - 00:24:01:18
Emily Smith
If you are wanting to spell the word dessert, you know that there are two S's because you always want more dessert. So that was a little trick that I've used, and we all can come up with little tricks like that. The classic one is like principal, if you're talking about the school principal is a ‘pal’ versus ‘ple’, because the principal is your pal.
00:24:01:19 - 00:24:31:11
Emily Smith
We all learned little tricks like that, and they're super helpful. We can teach kids to track and use little memory devices as a way to hold on to some of those spellings, and that will just become then ingrained, especially for tricky words. Those are a few strategies to think about in terms of some support at home. And what we're trying to do is just not tell all the time, just engage a little bit, a little bit of cognitive work, a little bit of a little bit of struggle.
00:24:31:11 - 00:24:32:24
Emily Smith
Just enough. Not too much.
00:24:33:00 - 00:24:57:19
Amanda Hartman
Yeah. Some brain work. Yeah. I mean, I'm always thinking about the young ones, but I think even when we think about the older ones as well, sharing, writing or doing writing together. So if we think about that cognitive load, we can think about what parts of writing we can share. So in the classroom we sometimes give like a little dictation.
00:24:57:21 - 00:25:23:06
Amanda Hartman
So I know, like with my nephews, if we're going to go to do a little shopping, I can have my nephew write the list and I can tell him the things that we want to remember to the places where we want to go. And he can write the list. Right. Like that could be a way to share writing or with my nephews.
00:25:23:06 - 00:25:58:07
Amanda Hartman
We may thank you letters to my parents, their grandparents, and we did that together. So we thought about the composition together and we wrote them together. And when my nephew was young, I would write some words and then hand him the pen, and then he would write some words. Literally, sharing the pen can be a, well, one, a fun activity because we're doing it together, but two so that we're lightening the load of writing at home and focusing on the the spelling or the sounds or what we want to say.
00:25:58:08 - 00:26:29:13
Emily Smith
Just enough work, not too much. Yeah. And having that shared pen, that's nice. I would say one last thing on spelling that can be helpful, especially as we're thinking about older kids or as or as kids get older, is the practice of editing and the habit of rereading work and looking at it. So this is again important to know that you're not supposed to get everything right the first time you write something that we all will, whether we're writing by hand or typing, we all will look back at our work and give it an edit.
00:26:29:13 - 00:26:46:19
Emily Smith
I think it's helpful for kids to have that as a mindset that when I'm writing something, I'm going to write it. And then one of the things I can do is spend a few minutes just rereading it and editing it. And another thing I can do is ask someone to do that with me. And so the editing could be I can have the lens of let me edit for spelling, let me just check.
00:26:46:23 - 00:27:09:08
Emily Smith
I know there are a few words that were tricky as I was spelling it. It sounds like that first grader Kim that you were working with was already in that mindset. She knew she had the lens of I need to look my spelling as a writer, and that's the kind of thing we want to instill in kids as well, that this is a process that you will often go through is just to check your work, and that sometimes another reader can help you with that.
00:27:09:09 - 00:27:22:04
Amanda Hartman
I mean, 100% for both things, for spelling and grammar. Rereading, writing is huge. Such an important thing to do with your with your kiddos.
00:27:22:05 - 00:27:45:06
Emily Smith
And actually, Amanda, just to take your example of the letters that are going to the grandparents. While I'm sure your grandparents are going to be, any grandparent, receiving a note from their grandchild is probably going to be completely loving and excited and keep that forever. And it's when you're writing something that's going to go to somebody else, you might have a little bit more of a lens on writing it with more standard spelling.
00:27:45:06 - 00:27:47:19
Emily Smith
I want to say you might have, depending on your age.
00:27:47:19 - 00:27:48:18
Amanda Hartman
So that someone else.
00:27:48:18 - 00:28:00:00
Emily Smith
Can read it so that someone else can read it. Whereas if you're writing a grocery list and you're going to go to the grocery store, it's a little less important that every word on that grocery list is spelled correctly. If you can read it and figure out what you need.
00:28:00:02 - 00:28:01:14
Amanda Hartman
Yes, yes.
00:28:01:20 - 00:28:03:01
Emily Smith
I think it's age dependent.
00:28:03:02 - 00:28:29:23
Amanda Hartman
For sure, and I like that advice. Check in with your teachers. Like what is too much? What is not enough? It's a myth that spelling should just be whatever you want, correct? Right? And always check it in with the teacher of what is really in the range of where your child is. That feels like, oh, I should be expecting that at home is always helpful.
00:28:30:00 - 00:28:56:05
Emily Smith
Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. We've talked a lot about spelling. We want to devote time also to grammar. Obviously we've put them together in this podcast. But grammar, the distinction there is just helpful maybe for us to say that's punctuation like periods, capitals, quotation marks, commas. It's practices around the use of punctuation marks, but also around capitalization of letters around any of those.
00:28:56:07 - 00:29:10:23
Emily Smith
The syntax of sentences like how you combine sentences sometimes with a semicolon or with a dash, or include information or embed information with parentheses, all that sort of stuff. That's what we were thinking about when we think about grammar.
00:29:11:00 - 00:29:29:00
Amanda Hartman
And is reflective of your language practices, and that in writing can be read and understood. So the syntax, the order of words is also really important piece of grammar as well.
00:29:29:02 - 00:29:49:09
Kim Brooks
Right. And it's not just knowing the parts of speech and labeling it, but it's like so I can put them in sentences functionally, both when I'm speaking and when I'm writing, just like you said, because it's all about communication. There's a little bit of research I wanted to share again with families and caregivers thinking about stages of grammar.
00:29:49:09 - 00:30:09:18
Kim Brooks
And like I said before, we could get very technical and in the weeds. And so instead, I thought we'd pull it out just to think through what are these stages that kids go through? And it's not necessarily linear, so to speak. They can like go forward, go back a little bit as they kind of continue to learn. So the first stage and this is from Constance Weaver's work.
00:30:09:18 - 00:30:29:24
Kim Brooks
What's funny is a lot of this is true for many things we learn not just in grammar, but specifically she talks about the recognition or immersion stage. And this is like an invisible stage. And she writes that most of our literary language is acquired before six years old, which feels really powerful.
00:30:30:00 - 00:30:31:04
Emily Smith
Shocking, really. Yeah, yeah.
00:30:31:05 - 00:30:53:05
Kim Brooks
And it also comes from being read too, and I would add being spoken to. So the importance of reading aloud to kids, and this is something I think we probably would recommend to all family and caregivers every night as much as you can. This hands over both literary and academic language. And then it has repeated practice and exposure to words.
00:30:53:05 - 00:31:21:11
Kim Brooks
And they're hearing that syntax that we spoke of. They're hearing how sentences are formed. Sometimes sentences are long and winding, and they might have things called conjunctions, right. That we we can teach into. Sometimes sentences are short and choppy. And then how is the English language put together and used is sort of this stage. She also goes on to say that most kids learn 80% of the of the language that they'll use their entire lifetime by six years old.
00:31:21:15 - 00:31:50:07
Kim Brooks
So again, powerful work that can happen even before they enter school with some lap reading. The next stage is approximation and we say embrace this stage. They're very tricky rules like we mentioned with spelling. Same thing with grammar. So at this stage students use and confuse. There might be run ons in their writing. And again, as parents and caregivers you need to think through what's that balance of feedback?
00:31:50:07 - 00:32:11:07
Kim Brooks
When am I having them correct things versus when is it okay to be a little inaccurate to boost the writing and the cognitive load Amanda talked about really happens here too. As writing continues and they're learning more about the processes of writing and the complexity of writing. It could be that, like I forgot a period at the end of my sentence.
00:32:11:07 - 00:32:16:05
Kim Brooks
It doesn't mean I don't know that periods exist, but I just forgot to do it.
00:32:16:06 - 00:32:40:24
Emily Smith
Yeah. And even if we take that approximation, we were talking about that with the spelling again, to go back to the guardian example. Now let's take that to grammar. Like if kids are using run on sentences, that's great because then that means their thoughts are getting more complicated. Instead of having very simple sentences, they're going to have lengthier ones that might have some conjunctions and relationships among them, but just even lists, they've got like a list in there.
00:32:40:24 - 00:32:46:11
Emily Smith
And that's more syntactic complexity, which is something we're aiming for in our kids writing.
00:32:46:13 - 00:33:11:02
Kim Brooks
Right, so again, they can use confuse and like play around with the language too. Then the next stage is mastery. And you can imagine this is like okay I understand this and I have a command of this skill and I'm using it well often. And it goes again beyond just identifying parts of speech and actually transferred into both their speaking and their writing on the page.
00:33:11:02 - 00:33:34:22
Kim Brooks
And then what's funny is this fourth stage, because you would think I got it, I'm done. But it doesn't really work like that whenever we learn things. So we're moving through these stages, we've mastered it. And then there might be the slippage stage, right. So what does it look like again. Because some things get more complex. I now have more difficult writing assignments.
00:33:34:23 - 00:33:55:08
Kim Brooks
All of a sudden I have to write this argument essay that's multiple pages. I have to have claim and reasons and evidence. And it has to be about this text that I just read. All of this means that sometimes there's slippage in certain skills, and in this case it could be grammar, but it could be applied to other parts of learning to.
00:33:55:10 - 00:34:25:10
Emily Smith
Yeah. And I think that's I think that's helpful for us to remember that when kids are challenged in, in one area, there might be a little slippage in something else. I also think it's interesting for us to consider context within this. So sometimes if we're writing to family and friends via text message or grammar and conventions may be a little looser because it's a text, it's not a letter that we're sending that's more formal.
00:34:25:10 - 00:34:48:20
Emily Smith
So I think it's important for us to consider that piece of things as well. The context within which we're using writing is, of course, one of the things that will shape how we make decisions about how we write, but also how much we edit. And oftentimes we're sending things quickly, and that's fine. Those are decisions that people make.
00:34:48:22 - 00:34:53:13
Emily Smith
Okay, Kim, you've got some other practical tips for us to, right, about some of the grammar work?
00:34:53:15 - 00:35:16:14
Kim Brooks
I do, I'll just start with one is just based on that research. What we know about that recognition immersion stage is to talk more and read aloud more at home, even for older kids. I can't stress enough that older kids can also be read aloud to, because often they get to this stage where they can read independently and it's like, go over there and read.
00:35:16:15 - 00:35:31:20
Kim Brooks
But again, they need to hear it. They need to hear adult in their households and in their communities speak. They also need to hear how authors put words together. So again, just read aloud as much as you can. And I think that goes really far.
00:35:31:22 - 00:35:33:12
Emily Smith
Yeah, absolutely.
00:35:33:13 - 00:35:36:10
Amanda Hartman
We might talk about that on every podcast.
00:35:36:12 - 00:35:38:04
Emily Smith
Every time, read aloud as much as you can.
00:35:38:04 - 00:35:39:15
Amanda Hartman
I think we might.
00:35:39:16 - 00:36:02:23
Emily Smith
Have conversations about things as much as you can. All of these things will help. Because even just talking about that, if if your student asks you to help them with their writing, and I think that's actually an important thing that as family members and caregivers were hoping for that invitation, we're not inserting ourselves into their school writing. I think about this a little bit more again for older kids.
00:36:02:23 - 00:36:22:08
Emily Smith
But if your student comes to you and is asking for a little bit of help, then I think there are a couple of things you could do. One of them is just to look for patterns like what do you notice about the work that's at hand? And so if you see a page of writing, let's just imagine there's a page of writing.
00:36:22:08 - 00:36:47:03
Emily Smith
And there aren't periods or question marks or exclamation points. One of the things that you might do is just ask a question about it, “So tell me about your use of periods and exclamation marks and question marks, like, what are you thinking about that?” Because the student will be like, oh, right, I'm supposed to do that? And so then that gets the conversation going, well, let's figure out how would you make decisions about where you're going to put those end marks.
00:36:47:03 - 00:37:12:00
Amanda Hartman
Yeah, I mean that's being curious as the parent and caregiver. Like I'm going to be curious about this to see what you know about it, to see if that activates something in you. And it also gets the child to do the work, which is always a nice thing to reflect on. Like who's doing the work, I am fixing everything in your writing,
00:37:12:02 - 00:37:22:03
Amanda Hartman
or are you looking at what you can fix in your writing with maybe some guidance, some suggestions and key questions.
00:37:22:05 - 00:37:45:07
Emily Smith
Absolutely. And then I think if you notice a pattern, always talk to your child's teacher. Like maybe they haven't learned this yet. So that could be something. And if you notice something that you know, they have learned, I think again looking at patterns, I'm a teacher, a teacher mom, so this might not be a perfect example, but my 13 year old did come to me within the last year.
00:37:45:07 - 00:38:08:21
Emily Smith
She was working on the literary essay, and she asked me to read it and give her some support with it before she turned it in. And one of the things that I noticed was that the proper nouns were like, all wacky. And it's actually you think, oh, capitalized names. But that's not actually so easy, because if you're saying, Coach Morris, do you capitalize the C in coach, do you capitalize?
00:38:08:22 - 00:38:33:11
Emily Smith
You know, Morris, you know, do you capitalize the M. Yes, you do. But she wasn't necessarily sure about all of those quote unquote rules. So having conversations about any aspect of grammar or something that you're noticing could be another way to look at this. Again, looking for patterns and seeing how do we have some conversations about this and recognize the complexity of it, because there were times when I was looking at her work and I was like, I'm not sure about that.
00:38:33:12 - 00:38:48:11
Emily Smith
You know, let's look at what other people have done to see how that's treated, or let's look it up and figure it out again, treating it a little bit like a puzzle as opposed to this is just something you're supposed to know. Let's get interested. Build some curiosity there.
00:38:48:13 - 00:38:53:15
Amanda Hartman
Yeah, that's really nice. That's really nice.
00:38:53:17 - 00:39:23:01
Amanda Hartman
Yeah. I mean, I think that back to that idea of talking with kids about what they want to write before they write, also can support the grammar that they're going to say, I was working with some, some fourth graders this week, and the teacher was like, the kids have great ideas, but when I look at their writing, I can't really tell what their ideas are.
00:39:23:03 - 00:39:46:13
Amanda Hartman
It feels like it's jumbled, you know? So I was like, well, let's practice saying what we want to write before we write it. And, you know, we call that the rehearsal. And so practicing what we want to say, how we want to say it and then writing it and then taking your advice and rereading it and then thinking about the next thing.
00:39:46:13 - 00:39:57:04
Amanda Hartman
For some of us, it can be helpful to break it into bits and parts, and that also can work on the clarity of your messaging of what you want to say.
00:39:57:06 - 00:40:21:10
Emily Smith
Absolutely. Always the relationship between our oral language development, the way that we talk and enter into conversations, and then what happens on the page is so important. Okay. I think, of course, the other thing we want to say with any of our we want to say practical tips. What are the things we're doing? Keep it positive. If a student's becoming frustrated, it's not going to be productive.
00:40:21:10 - 00:40:39:21
Emily Smith
So if things are going badly and the energy of your student is waning, if they're feeling frustrated, then I would say, take a break. We don't want writing to be something that becomes a major frustration. And of course, talk to your child's teacher. Amanda, I think we're ready to talk books, right?
00:40:39:22 - 00:40:41:14
Amanda Hartman
I love to talk about books.
00:40:41:14 - 00:40:45:00
Emily Smith
You do, and you're amazing. You've got a lot to share today with us.
00:40:45:05 - 00:40:46:06
Amanda Hartman
It’s my favorite section.
00:40:46:07 - 00:40:48:14
Emily Smith
Yeah. Will you give us some book recommendations?
00:40:48:15 - 00:41:17:04
Amanda Hartman
Surely. So I wanted to talk a little bit about our 2026 prize winning books for some particular prizes. It's not every prize that has been given out by the ALA, but here are some. So I thought I would highlight them, and it's always nice to just see what's being celebrated. Some people like to follow prizes and try to read the books on the prizes.
00:41:17:04 - 00:41:55:07
Amanda Hartman
That can be fun. And I have some selections that are young adult, middle grade, and also some picture books. And so these are all new titles. So I'm going to start with the Newbery Award winning novel All the Blues in the Sky by Renee Watson, and this is a book that I've actually read. It's a beautiful book. They call it a heartfelt story about a young person who has really lost someone really important in her life, and how she deals with that grief.
00:41:55:10 - 00:42:04:17
Amanda Hartman
And it's a beautiful novel. It deserves all the accolades and wonderful for middle grade and YA for for sure.
00:42:04:17 - 00:42:17:03
Emily Smith
Those Newbery Award winning books, I mean, can't you picture them, all the ones that you read that you lived within those books? So I just feel like anytime you've got a Newbery Medal or even a runner up there, it's going to be a good one.
00:42:17:05 - 00:42:47:20
Amanda Hartman
I mean, thank you for saying that because there's so many also ones that are in the honor, books that are also beautiful and amazing. And then I have two from the Coretta Scott King Awards for illustration, The Library in the Woods, which is exactly that, a hidden library in the woods. And then Will's Race from Home by Jewell Parker Rhodes, who, you know, is another middle grade author who is quite prolific in the field in children's literature.
00:42:47:20 - 00:42:56:20
Amanda Hartman
And this is historical fiction for the race for land in the late 1800s in Oklahoma.
00:42:56:21 - 00:43:17:04
Emily Smith
I just want to make a little plug on those. Like the Newbery, of course, is for writing. And usually I think we think of it as plot. But all of the grammar structures and syntax and all of that that's in those novels is wonderful. And anytime you've got historical fiction, you usually have more interesting syntax and dialects and the language use that really encourages more complexity.
00:43:17:04 - 00:43:25:12
Emily Smith
So it goes back to this idea of we're reading rich books to kids or with kids that's going to support their grammar development.
00:43:25:14 - 00:43:55:03
Amanda Hartman
Yeah. Wonderful. Legendary Frybread Drive-In is the the winner of the Printz Award, which is specifically for young adults. And I loved this one. Also about indigenous families and the tradition, families and traditions of running a family business together. It's a it's a fun book. I've read that one as well. And then I also included the Pura Belpré Award winners.
00:43:55:05 - 00:44:30:07
Amanda Hartman
The Pecan Sheller, also another historical fiction book about labor history here in the in the US, and Popo the Xolo, which is a story that comes from indigenous Mexican traditions and is about like the tech underworld, a beautiful picture book. And then the last one is Fireworks, which won the Caldecott, and the Caldecott is an award for illustrations. So yeah.
00:44:30:07 - 00:44:48:24
Amanda Hartman
So some some new books to look at. Also some awards to follow and to maybe even research, other books that are mentioned on those lists, and to even go back to the 2025 ones or the 2024. That can be a fun thing to do as well.
00:44:49:00 - 00:44:53:05
Emily Smith
Yeah, and I love that we've got nonfiction in there too, for our nonfiction kids. Yeah.
00:44:53:06 - 00:44:54:16
Amanda Hartman
100%.
00:44:54:21 - 00:44:59:12
Emily Smith
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Kim. Amanda, it's been great.
00:44:59:13 - 00:45:26:08
Amanda Hartman
Well, thank you all for listening to our series Advancing Literacy Beyond the Classroom. We hope that this continues to spark curiosity and conversations outside the classroom with your kids, and supports the growth and enjoyment. Remember, literacy isn't just the books they read in school. It's about the stories we share, the world we explore, and the conversations we have. To stay connected with our community,
00:45:26:09 - 00:45:58:07
Amanda Hartman
you can head over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite podcasts, to follow our series, and to catch our new episodes each month. If you find value in these conversations, please leave us a five star rating and a review and share the show with someone you think would also enjoy the journey. You can also find our next live workshops on our website, AdvancingLiteracy.tc.columbia.edu.
00:45:58:09 - 00:46:22:04
Amanda Hartman
Please also share this information with others in your community. All are welcome and if you are interested in bringing professional development to your family, schools or district, please email us. We hope you join us again. Keep advancing literacy. One word, one book, and one conversation at a time.
