00:00:10Empowering Teacher Practice Through Research
00:10:06Practical Classroom Teaching With Videos
00:21:49Engaging Literacy Teaching Strategies
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Jennifer Serravallo specifically focuses on ideas from her latest book, Teaching Reading Across the Day. Her books utilize research-supported practices, translated for everyday classroom teaching. Jen is known for her work in the areas of reading and writing strategies, individualized literacy support for students, and teacher professional development in literacy. She is a New York Times Bestselling author of teacher professional resources including The Reading Strategies Book 2.0 and The Writing Strategies Book. You can connect with Jen and her work at her website www.jenniferserravallo.com, on Twitter @jserravallo, on Instagram @jenniferserravallo, or by joining The Reading and Writing Strategies Facebook Community.
To cite this episode:
Persohn, L. (Host). (2025, Feb. 11). Another conversation with Jennifer Serravallo (Season 5, No. 7) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/F889-5592-600B-3925-4EAE-3
Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
English
United States
SHOW NOTES 🔗
TRANSCRIPT 🔗
WEBVTT
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Education research has a problem the work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers.
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Classroom Caffeine is here to help.
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In each episode, I talk with a top education researcher or an expert educator about what they have learned from years of research and experiences.
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Classroom Caffeine return guest Jennifer Cerevalo specifically focuses on ideas from her latest book, teaching Reading Across the Day.
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Her books utilize research-supported practices translated for everyday classroom teaching.
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Jen is known for her work in the areas of reading and writing strategies, individualized literacy, support for students and teacher professional development in literacy.
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She is a New York Times bestselling author of teacher professional resources, including the Reading Strategies Book 2.0 and the Writing Strategies Book.
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You can connect with Jen and her work at her website, wwwjennifersiferavallocom, on Twitter or X at jseravallo that's J-S-E-R-R-A-V-A-L-L-O On Instagram at Jennifer Seravallo or by joining the Reading and Writing Strategies Facebook community For more information about our guest.
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stay tuned to the end of this episode.
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So pour a cup of your favorite drink and join me, your host, lindsay Persaud, for Classroom Caffeine research to energize your teaching practice.
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Jen, thank you for joining me.
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Welcome back to the show.
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Thank you so much for having me again.
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So, from your own experiences in education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now, and maybe specifically what drove you to write your latest book?
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Sure.
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So my newest book, teaching Reading Across the Day, is a book about methods and structures for teaching literacy instruction.
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I cover everything in this book, from phonics to reader's theater, to different ways to support kids' comprehension with grade level complex texts like read aloud and close reading.
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So there's a variety of different structures, different methods of teaching, different planning templates.
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And so to your question what is this moment that we're in right now?
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I think there's a few different things that I think about.
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One is this really rich conversation around the science of reading, or what is research-based instruction and what does research help us to know?
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And related to that, there's this real surge in legislative changes and new curricular adoptions in a lot of states in an attempt to better align practices and curriculum to what research tells us is most likely to work for most kids.
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So we're in this moment where a lot of teachers are being asked to change things.
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They're being asked to change their approach to literacy, the way that they structure their literacy block, even down to the kinds of things that they're teaching students during the literacy block.
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So what my work is often known for is just trying to take complex things and make them really practical and doable.
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So one of the things I wanted to do with this book was to create, use right away templates for planning lessons, together with examples of what it looks like when a lesson like this is done well.
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So a template of you know what is a, what is a read aloud lesson look like how do I plan for it, what kinds of things are you doing, anticipate, and then what does it look like when it's done well.
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At the same time, one of the other themes throughout the book is the importance of responsive teaching, making sure that we're not just sticking to a script, we're not just sticking to a plan, and that we've got to really look at the kids in front of us.
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And part of the responsiveness comes into play, of course, when we're planning.
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We know our kids.
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We know, for example, what their background knowledge is about a particular topic, and so we make adjustments to our plan to try to support connecting what they know already to what new information we're trying to teach in the lesson.
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But there's also responsiveness that needs to happen in the midst of the lesson, so we're watching students' faces and their eyes and whether they're with us and they're not with us.
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We see when they're engaged and when engagement starts to falter and teachers need to make adjustments.
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So we need to speed things up, speed the pacing up or slow things down.
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We need to pop in an extra demonstration that we hadn't planned to do because we realized they need a little more support, or we need to back up and offer a question and an opportunity for them to discuss, or we need to provide another example or change the way that we're asking kids to engage, to try to get the liveliness back up in the classroom right.
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So those kinds of responses and those kinds of adjustments are critical as well, and again, some of which we can anticipate and some of which we need to be ready for in the moment to sort of like improvise in response to what we see.
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So there's also a lot of support in the book for that.
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I think that matches this moment right now, because again, teachers are being asked to teach from these new core programs, these new scripts.
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Every time there's new core program adoptions we hear this phrase teaching with fidelity, which sometimes means just very tightly holding on to what that curriculum guide says.
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But really what we know from research is that the teacher's decision-making and flexibility in the moment matters a lot for whether or not the kids are going to be able to get it.
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So I wanted to offer again just a really practical, helpful how-to guide for teachers to help them see what kinds of ways they're going to make adaptations and what kinds of adjustments and responses they might need to make.
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So I unpack that within each chapter and then I also have video examples and annotated lesson plans where I talk about here's the changes I made, here's why I made this change, here's the adaptation.
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Because of this.
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This is what I saw, and so this is what I did to try to kind of walk teachers through that.
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I appreciate that, jen, and I think probably one of my biggest fears in teaching right now is that teachers are losing a lot of their autonomy and their ability to make professional decisions.
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I also think there's just a lot of static, there's a lot of noise right now as far as what is good for kids, and I'm just afraid that there are too many elements missing from the conversation, because we know that classrooms are really robust environments where every room is a little bit different.
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Every teacher's personality sort of plays into what that classroom community looks and feels and sounds like, as well as, of course, the kids and what they bring to the table of curriculum and curricular decision-making.
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Is that we're losing some of that richness of the environment and unfortunately, I think that often becomes counterproductive, right?
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Because when teachers can't respond to your point of you know we need to be able to improvise.
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In the moment, when teachers' hands are tied to do that kind of improvisation, I think that becomes really challenging.
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I think it can make the profession frustrating, and so I appreciate that your work not only looks at positive practices for kids, maybe best practices for kids, but also talks about how you make those decisions in the moment, because I think that it's just so critical to what teachers have always done.
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That, yeah, I appreciate that you sort of hold that as a central focus in your book.
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Thank you, lindsay, I appreciate that.
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Yeah, I think you know it is critical that we're informed by the quote unquote science right, that we look at the research, and.
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But I also think and I write about this in the book that there's a limit to what research can tell us, and there needs to be a place where you know we honor the science.
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We we use our best attempts at following what the science says.
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But Tim Rosensky talks a lot about this the importance of the art of teaching as well, that we make room for creativity and also professional decision making.
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But those two things are.
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They're not in conflict, they're hand in hand.
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We need to do both, and so what I hope I did in this book was to show both.
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I have these meaty sections with lots of research citations.
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But then I also talk a lot about the importance of teacher creativity and decision-making, and I'll be honest, I would not have wanted to be a teacher for as long as I did if I didn't have the ability to be creative, and I work with so many teachers.
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We are creative people and I work with so many teachers.
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We are creative people.
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Like part of what draws us to this profession is the ability to be creative, from you know, from the ways that we craft lessons to really connecting with our kids, and that means sometimes changing the text to a text we love so much and we want to bring in this beloved picture book to you know even the heart that teachers put into their classroom environments and what the room looks like, like teachers are creative people.
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So you stifle that and you tell teachers they can't be creative and they can't make their own decisions, or you dishonor the professionalism and their own experience and their expertise.
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It's not good for teachers, it's not good for the profession and it's really not good for kids.
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Ultimately.
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Oh, absolutely I couldn't agree with you more and I think that, yeah, that in my experience in classroom being in a classroom myself was one of the more challenging elements.
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It wasn't working with kids, that was always sort of the joy of it, but it was navigating heavy handed policies and procedures that did sort of take some of the joy out of that environment.
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So I'm hoping that teachers will feel armed to make those positive decisions, and I think in some instances, unfortunately, teachers have to defend their decision making as well.
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And so, you know, having resources to back them up research resources, practical application type resources I think is just really important.
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Yeah, I worked really hard in this book.
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I worked with two research assistants who helped me to access a lot of this research.
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Even as a professional book author, I couldn't get a lot of the research without somebody who had like university connections.
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Like that alone is problematic.
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So certainly teachers aren't able to access these research articles, right.
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So I had these two incredible research assistants and they helped me access a lot of articles and we read them together and discussed the methodology.
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300 of them ended up in this book, but I put them into these what research says, sections in each chapter like a really quick one page dense.
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You know, here's the all, the essence of what the research for the last couple of decades says about this particular practice.
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Here's what you need to know for that exact reason, like, do teachers need to read all these articles firsthand?
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I mean, if you're interested, go for it, but I think you really need to be more armed.
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That's a really great way of saying it.
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You need to say yes, this practice that I'm choosing to use is a research supported practice, and here are the studies that have found that this was helpful, so that you're ready to go when you're making those decisions absolutely.
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And you just sort of hit on one reason why the Classroom Caffeine Podcast exists.
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We know that teachers often cannot access research articles and often don't have the time to navigate them or to read and process everything that they say, particularly when you're talking about hundreds of articles around a particular topic.
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So it sounds like we are very much on the same page when it comes to giving teachers what they need in order to be armed for those conversations.
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And, on that note, what would you like listeners to know about your work?
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Or, maybe more appropriately at this point, what else would you like listeners to know about your work?
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be more, appropriately at this point.
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What else would you like listeners to know about your work?
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Yeah, I mean I think I want people to know that I've done the homework to synthesize and sort of distill the key research findings down.
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But I try to not live in the weeds of the research.
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I try to make it really practical because I am a teacher.
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I was a classroom teacher for a long time and I'm still every week in classrooms with teachers and all the videos in this book are me teaching students right.
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So I am very connected to the classroom.
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I'm very connected to the day-to-day of what teachers are doing and I really want to make resources that are practical and usable and helpful and really to the point.
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I worked really hard with my editor.
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I have an incredible editor, you know to cut down any unnecessary words and just get to the point as quickly as possible so teachers can turn around and use the ideas right away in their classrooms.
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Well, I think the idea of embedding videos in a book I know it's not brand new, but it is definitely a newer concept to have these video companions and I hope that you know when readers do see something like that, they take a moment to visit the video and see what it looks like in action.
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Because I think you know that's one thing that the world of literacy and literacy research tells us is that particular modes or formats are more conducive to conveying an idea.
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So, rather than writing out everything that you've done in teaching practice, watching a video can really help to highlight the most important aspects, to animate what it is that you're talking about, to add the nuance and to bring in that example in really important ways that I think don't just tell what the research says but actually shows what it looks like in practice.
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Yeah, so for me, I remember in college reading all these books about methodology and teaching strategies and my like year long methods classes and going into my classroom the first year as a first year teacher with this.
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What I thought was this idea, like I know what I'm doing, I know how to do this and I and just totally and completely I think we all have the same experience right, like okay, that did not go how it said it would in the book I read, right, and it wasn't until I had the experience in my second year yeah, it was my second year I found this woman down the hall who had a lot more experience than I had and I just said to her would you mind if I hang out in your classroom on my prep periods?
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And every time my kids were in art or music or gym or whatever, I would be in Lee Ware's class watching her.
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I was watching, like how she responded to the disruptive kid in the back or how she explained a concept or how she transitioned kids from one thing, like all the things that were hard for me.
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I was really watching and learning kids from one thing, like all the things that were hard for me.
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I was really watching and learning, and it was the live watching that did so much more than the thousands of pages of reading that I had done in college.
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And then I was fortunate.
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I went to a different school and I had a staff developer who came into my classroom and modeled teaching with my own students and again it was like oh, that's what it's supposed to look like.
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I see now, right.
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And so I have always found that when I work with teachers, I want to show right.
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So when I'm consulting in schools, I'm in classrooms, I'm not in a in a meeting room doing.
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You know, I do do full day workshops, but my preference is that we're in the classroom, I'm modeling with the kids right in front of you.
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You're now trying it and I'm coaching you and I'm giving you that feedback.
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So we're in the classroom doing the work.
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Or when I do do online workshops or full-day workshops, I use a ton of video and hands down.
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In the evaluation at the end, teachers always say it's the videos that were the most impactful, the thing that really helped them to see and be able to visualize what this would look like with their own kids.
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And so when I was conceptualizing this book, I actually started with thinking about what the video content would be.
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What am I going to show?
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And there's over four hours of video, of classroom video.
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So I would say, like, the video is probably 60% of the text.
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It's not like a supplement or an add-on.
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You have to watch the video.
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The video is it 60% of the text?
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It's not like a supplement or an add-on.
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You have to watch the video.
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The video is, it's woven into the text.
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So I, you know, I have a little section where I set up the lesson type, I introduce the video, I show you the lesson plan for the video, I annotate why I made changes.
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That I did.
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I show another video.
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Each chapter has several different video examples because I wanted to show small group, whole class, one-on-one, I wanted to show science, social studies, english language arts and how these lesson types work, no matter the content area and no matter the grade level.
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Right, I have little kids, big kids, like all the way through middle school down to first grade, so you could see all the different ages and different contexts.
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So the video is, I think, just critical.
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But I want to also say that the video is all real.
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It was all done in one take.
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There are no retakes.
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The only edits were to merge the two camera views together or to try to get this audio up so you could hear the kids a little bit better.
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To add captions, like I really didn't cut anything out or redo anything to make it look better.
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It is real classroom footage and I wanted to do that because teachers are teaching real classes.
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They don't have an editor who's, like you know, fancying things up after you do a lesson, and so there's moments, like in some of the lessons, where I'll ask a question and it's like crickets, nobody says anything and it's awkward for a second.
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And then I do something and I want to show you like, what do you do in that moment, right?
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Or I ask a question and the response I get is completely off base from what I even asked.
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Okay, well, what do you do?
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And I could have just edited that out and made it look cleaner.
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But I think teachers realize when stuff's not real, first of all.
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But second of all, I think there's real important learning as teachers to see the I'm not even going to call it mistakes or things going wrong.
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It's just real life.
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That's what happens in teaching is you don't get the response that you expected, and then you need to respond.
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You need to do something about it.
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So I wanted to show those real interactions because I think they're really informative and helpful.
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Oh, absolutely.
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And now, as you're describing these moments, Jen, I can picture them in my own experience, Of course either the you know you ask a question that you think is just going to be so compelling and everyone just looks at you.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Right, or you ask a question and you get an answer that is, or some response that has nothing to do with anything you anticipated, and so I think that those are the moments when it does require that improvisation.
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There is no script that can ready you for those moments, right?
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Like I often encourage my students and I teach pre-service teachers I encourage them to write down.
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You write down phrases that they have seen or that they have experienced themselves that help to generate conversation or help to bring conversations back on track, but to give themselves kind of a menu of possibilities so that eventually they have that in the back of their mind.
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Where, right, when nobody says anything, what do I do next?
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What is the phrase that seems to help generate conversation or bring us back on track?
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So I'm always encouraging my students to draft out a menu of phrasing for themselves that they can build on over the years, and eventually, I think you do end up internalizing those kinds of things.
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But when you're, you know, when you're first starting out, it can be very tricky and it can feel in that moment like some sort of fail Right, when really we know that that's just real life, that's just how that works, and so having something to say OK, where do I go next, what is my next move?
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I think is really, really important.
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Yeah, I have to that point.
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That's exact.
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That is exact idea of a menu of like what are the predictable things that are going to happen?
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I'm not going to say go wrong, what are the predictable things that are going to happen.
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You know, the structure of the book is that there's a few introductory chapters and then there's a chapter for each of the different lesson types I've mentioned already, like close reading, shared reading, reader's theater, conversation lessons, focus lessons and so on.
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And so within each chapter there's a table that says it's an if-then chart called responsive teaching, right?
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So if this predictable thing happens during this lesson type and it likely will here's what you can say or do or show, or here's how you can pivot to respond to what's happening in front of you.
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So I offer that table unique to each lesson type within each of those nine chapters, and I think you're right Over time, that goal is that you don't have a if-then chart in front of you, but rather you've just internalized that and you can just know what to do.
00:20:15.040 --> 00:20:15.884
You know the improv is a little easier.
00:20:16.805 --> 00:20:18.710
Yeah, that's so very important.
00:20:18.710 --> 00:20:28.159
The other thing I was thinking about as you were describing these videos, is that these kinds of resources really help us, I think, to expand our circle of mentorship.
00:20:28.159 --> 00:20:47.233
I mean, yes, of course, books and articles can offer some sort of mentorship, but I think whenever you see another teacher enacting these practices in real life with real kids in the moment, even if you're feeling like you don't have the support of a mentor in your own teaching environment, I think you can go to resources like this.
00:20:47.233 --> 00:20:54.993
And I know you also offer so many live and responsive resources through social media where you're responding in the moment to people.
00:20:54.993 --> 00:20:57.269
And so I think that that's one thing.
00:20:57.550 --> 00:21:09.854
I always want to encourage my students as future teachers, and anyone I work with to really identify where are their resources and how do you still feel connected to the profession and supported to do your best work.
00:21:09.854 --> 00:21:25.496
And I think that by watching other teachers, especially whenever just as you did right in your first year going to a teacher to say, can I just see how you're doing things I think that's so important and then also having someone, that's a bit of a sounding board, you know where you say I have this idea or I have this challenge.
00:21:25.496 --> 00:21:33.730
What do I do about it and how do I turn to the research, so to speak, and in positive and productive ways.
00:21:33.730 --> 00:21:37.538
That helps me to contextualize and to make the best decisions I can for my students.
00:21:37.538 --> 00:21:47.395
So, yeah, it sounds a little bit strange to say that videos can be a mentor, but I really do think that in modeling that practice, it can help us to expand our professional networks.
00:21:47.395 --> 00:21:48.557
Yeah, for sure.
00:21:49.165 --> 00:21:53.738
So I think we've already touched on a couple of the challenges of today's educational climate.
00:21:53.738 --> 00:21:58.297
But, given those challenges, what message do you want teachers to hear?
00:21:59.045 --> 00:22:05.519
I mean, I think another challenge that we haven't yet talked about is sort of how kids are changing.
00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:33.987
You know, and I think that I mean kids are always changing because society is changing, the context in which we're learning is changing, and I'm thinking about, you know, one challenge that I hear from a lot of teachers today I'm seeing with my own children, with my like daughters, my own children is just attention and focus and the challenge of competing with screens and not just social media.
00:22:33.987 --> 00:22:59.509
But I'm thinking like even some apps that we're using to engage kids with content that are gamifying things, that create these sort of dopamine rushes, and how challenging it is from the perspective of a literacy teacher to get kids and keep kids attentive and interested in reading pages in a book, that the kind of attention that's required to do that, to do that what Marianne Wolfe talks about this, this deep, engaged reading state.
00:22:59.509 --> 00:23:07.537
That's a real challenge I think that a lot of teachers are grappling with right now and losing kids engagement and motivation to read.
00:23:07.537 --> 00:23:15.938
So it's something that I think anyone that's working on literacy right now needs to be thinking about is how do we make our lessons more engaging?
00:23:15.938 --> 00:23:31.516
How do we ensure that the texts we're providing kids are engaging and what are some of the ways that we're engaging kids, the moves that we're making as teachers, that we're engaging kids within a lesson to keep their mind and attention into the text that they're reading.
00:23:31.516 --> 00:23:44.729
So that's another thing I was thinking about when I was writing this book and using structures like Reader's Theater, which is highly engaging and fun and motivating and gets kids to reread a lot and helps them with their fluency.
00:23:45.413 --> 00:23:58.217
Or how do I make a phonics lesson a little more engaging and what are the kinds of games or activities that I can engage kids with in a phonics lesson to make it more I'm not going to say fun, but like engaging so their mind.
00:23:58.217 --> 00:24:04.768
What I mean by engaging is their mind is really on it, you know, and their their heart is in it and they're really doing the work.
00:24:04.768 --> 00:24:06.549
They're not just kind of passively sitting there.
00:24:06.549 --> 00:24:11.898
Lots of opportunities for active response and doing things during the lesson.
00:24:11.898 --> 00:24:27.971
Yeah, or even I take like a close reading lesson where I'm asking kids to do like deeper level critical thinking and analysis, and I have a video where I'm using a Billie Eilish song and we're doing really deep work with a song they've loved and have heard a million times on the radio and it's about the text.
00:24:27.971 --> 00:24:30.493
They're really motivated to think more deeply about this text.
00:24:30.493 --> 00:24:36.097
So you know what are the ways that we can make this learning, this literacy work a little bit more engaging for kids?
00:24:36.097 --> 00:24:38.073
So that's kind of another thread throughout the book.
00:24:38.684 --> 00:24:43.297
Well, and I don't think that engagement necessarily excludes fun, right.
00:24:43.297 --> 00:24:46.275
But I don't think that engagement always looks like fun.
00:24:46.275 --> 00:25:06.231
So I think that that's an important clarification too is that we do want kids to be engaged, and I think that goes back to an earlier point that unless teachers are able to be responsive in the moment to what's going on in their particular context, it's really difficult, and in some instances I might even say impossible, to achieve engagement.
00:25:07.394 --> 00:25:33.406
Whenever you know if the teacher is not engaged, it becomes so challenging for kids to be interested and engaged in what they're doing Absolutely, and you know, I think about some of the was it NYU, steinhardt, I think, did a review of some of the most commonly used curriculum, or commonly recommended or on these approved state list curriculum, and they found that some of the texts are actually culturally destructive.
00:25:33.406 --> 00:25:34.489
That's not good.
00:25:34.489 --> 00:25:36.573
That's not good at all.
00:25:36.773 --> 00:25:39.526
No, no, that's not good to say you know, okay.
00:25:39.586 --> 00:25:57.155
So like on the word, you know, on a scale of like bad to the worst, like that's the worst, do we absolutely want to say all right, teacher, you have the ability to take that text, decide to not use it and find something else suitable in its place that's going to be culturally responsive and engaging for your students?
00:25:57.155 --> 00:25:57.817
Absolutely.
00:25:57.817 --> 00:26:01.153
But there also might be, you know, like you said, the teacher might be like this isn't.
00:26:01.153 --> 00:26:02.406
This is not interesting to me.
00:26:02.406 --> 00:26:06.438
I cannot sell a six week unit on birds.
00:26:06.438 --> 00:26:07.842
I on birds, I'm afraid of birds.
00:26:07.842 --> 00:26:12.057
I had one teacher talking about she was afraid of birds and she had to teach this curriculum.
00:26:12.057 --> 00:26:14.247
That was like all birds for six weeks long.
00:26:14.247 --> 00:26:20.832
Like, okay, is there a way that we could make some adjustments here so that the teacher's a little more into it, the kids are a little more into it?
00:26:21.133 --> 00:26:31.175
And sometimes it's the text, and I offer a lot of advice in the book for how to create conceptually coherent text sets and where to find texts and different texts that work well for different kinds of lesson types.
00:26:31.175 --> 00:26:45.190
But I also think sometimes it's about changing the methods, so saying, all right, this text is great, right, but the way that this curriculum is suggesting that I use this text is not going to be engaging for kids.
00:26:45.190 --> 00:26:51.472
So I'm going to change this from a independent task where there's just a read this and answer questions at the end.
00:26:51.472 --> 00:26:54.672
Or I know the kids are going to be like just you know, looking for the answers.
00:26:54.672 --> 00:26:56.425
They want to finish it as quickly as possible.
00:26:56.807 --> 00:27:03.509
I'm going to change this to a read aloud where I'm going to insert some opportunities for them to stop and sketch or act some parts out.
00:27:03.509 --> 00:27:10.804
Or I'm going to change this to a reader's theater lesson where they're going to get to take on the roles of the characters and act it out and reread it a lot.
00:27:10.804 --> 00:27:14.372
So the teacher should have the ability to change the lesson type, the text.
00:27:14.372 --> 00:27:25.973
Again, you're bound to the objectives, you're bound to the standards, you're bound to the outcomes, but I don't think we should be shackling teachers to like the minutia of like.
00:27:25.973 --> 00:27:30.994
This is the procedure of the lesson and here's how the lesson has to go with this particular text in this particular way.
00:27:30.994 --> 00:27:40.596
We need again to make room for the art of teaching, allow teachers to be creative and flexible, and I hope that my book helps them to make those adaptations.
00:27:41.224 --> 00:27:55.395
Yeah, I think that that's a very important idea and also I do think that it comes through, at least in my mind, loudly and clearly in all of your books that this is about teacher autonomy and it is about doing what's best for the kids who are right in front of us.
00:27:55.976 --> 00:27:57.978
So, yeah, I could not agree more.
00:27:57.978 --> 00:28:04.962
I think that that is a critical element of teaching that I'm afraid is getting a little bit lost in the shuffle in recent years.
00:28:04.962 --> 00:28:09.969
A little bit lost in the shuffle in recent years.
00:28:09.969 --> 00:28:11.251
Thank you so much and thank you for your time today.
00:28:11.251 --> 00:28:12.775
Thank you for your contributions to the field of education.
00:28:12.775 --> 00:28:24.253
As I said, I feel like your books really do offer, as you mentioned, that sort of cut through to get to the point of what is research telling us and how does that translate to classroom practice.
00:28:24.253 --> 00:28:34.377
Because I think that that's another thing we've sort of lost sight of in the science of reading conversation is that sometimes research isn't really translatable to what happens in the classroom.
00:28:34.377 --> 00:28:38.913
But your books, your resources really do support that translation.
00:28:38.913 --> 00:28:40.999
So I thank you so much for that contribution.
00:28:41.500 --> 00:28:42.566
Thank you, thank you.
00:28:43.200 --> 00:28:47.132
Jennifer Cerevalo is an expert in literacy teaching strategies.
00:28:47.132 --> 00:29:05.039
She is the author of the Reading Strategies Book 2.0, the Writing Strategies Book Understanding Texts and Readers, a Teacher's Guide to Reading Conferences, teaching Writing in Small Groups all published with Heinemann and most recently, teaching Reading Across the Day, published with Corwin.
00:29:05.039 --> 00:29:14.471
Her resources are aimed at helping teachers make goal-directed, responsive strategy instruction, conferring and small group work accessible in every classroom.
00:29:14.471 --> 00:29:25.369
Jen is a frequent invited speaker at national and regional conferences and travels throughout the US and Canada to provide full-day workshops and works with teachers and students in classrooms.
00:29:25.369 --> 00:29:32.190
She's also an experienced online educator who regularly offers live webinars and online workshops.
00:29:32.190 --> 00:29:50.884
She's also authored two self-paced, asynchronous online courses Strategies in Action Reading and Writing Methods and Content and Teaching Reading in Small Groups Matching Methods to methods to purposes which you can access through her website at wwwjenniferceravallocom.
00:29:50.884 --> 00:30:02.035
That's wwwjenniferceravallocom.
00:30:02.435 --> 00:30:10.872
Jen holds a bachelor's in arts degree from Vassar College and a master's of the arts degree from Teachers College, where she also taught graduate and undergraduate classes.
00:30:10.872 --> 00:30:17.723
She began her career in education as a public school teacher in New York City and then began consulting throughout the country.
00:30:17.723 --> 00:30:28.144
She has more than 15 years experience helping teachers to create literacy classrooms where students are joyfully engaged and the instruction is meaningfully individualized to students' goals.
00:30:28.645 --> 00:30:54.707
You can learn more about Jen and her work at heinpub backslash saravallo that's h-e-i-n dot p-u-b backslash s-e-r-r-a-v-a-L-L-O on Twitter or X at J Saravallo, on Instagram at Jennifer Saravallo, or by joining the Reading and Writing Strategies Facebook community.
00:30:54.707 --> 00:31:02.308
For the good of all students, classroom Caffeine aims to energize education, research and practice.
00:31:02.308 --> 00:31:07.028
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00:31:07.028 --> 00:31:10.767
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00:31:10.767 --> 00:31:16.967
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00:31:17.689 --> 00:31:24.971
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00:31:24.971 --> 00:31:43.867
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00:31:43.867 --> 00:31:48.883
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00:31:48.883 --> 00:31:50.546
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00:31:50.546 --> 00:31:58.631
Special thanks to the Classroom Caffeine team Leah Berger, abaya Valuru, stephanie Branson and Shaba Oshfath.
00:31:58.631 --> 00:32:01.625
As always, I raise my mug to you teachers.
00:32:01.625 --> 00:32:03.029
Thanks for joining me.
00:00:10.852 --> 00:00:19.652
Education research has a problem the work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers.
00:00:19.652 --> 00:00:22.608
Classroom Caffeine is here to help.
00:00:22.608 --> 00:00:34.091
In each episode, I talk with a top education researcher or an expert educator about what they have learned from years of research and experiences.
00:00:34.091 --> 00:00:44.906
Classroom Caffeine return guest Jennifer Cerevalo specifically focuses on ideas from her latest book, teaching Reading Across the Day.
00:00:44.906 --> 00:00:51.396
Her books utilize research-supported practices translated for everyday classroom teaching.
00:00:51.396 --> 00:01:01.850
Jen is known for her work in the areas of reading and writing strategies, individualized literacy, support for students and teacher professional development in literacy.
00:01:01.850 --> 00:01:12.439
She is a New York Times bestselling author of teacher professional resources, including the Reading Strategies Book 2.0 and the Writing Strategies Book.
00:01:12.439 --> 00:01:50.487
You can connect with Jen and her work at her website, wwwjennifersiferavallocom, on Twitter or X at jseravallo that's J-S-E-R-R-A-V-A-L-L-O On Instagram at Jennifer Seravallo or by joining the Reading and Writing Strategies Facebook community For more information about our guest.
00:01:50.728 --> 00:01:52.712
stay tuned to the end of this episode.
00:01:52.712 --> 00:02:04.512
So pour a cup of your favorite drink and join me, your host, lindsay Persaud, for Classroom Caffeine research to energize your teaching practice.
00:02:04.512 --> 00:02:06.584
Jen, thank you for joining me.
00:02:06.584 --> 00:02:07.888
Welcome back to the show.
00:02:07.888 --> 00:02:09.986
Thank you so much for having me again.
00:02:09.986 --> 00:02:19.860
So, from your own experiences in education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now, and maybe specifically what drove you to write your latest book?
00:02:20.762 --> 00:02:21.082
Sure.
00:02:21.082 --> 00:02:29.375
So my newest book, teaching Reading Across the Day, is a book about methods and structures for teaching literacy instruction.
00:02:29.375 --> 00:02:40.855
I cover everything in this book, from phonics to reader's theater, to different ways to support kids' comprehension with grade level complex texts like read aloud and close reading.
00:02:40.855 --> 00:02:47.383
So there's a variety of different structures, different methods of teaching, different planning templates.
00:02:47.383 --> 00:02:52.020
And so to your question what is this moment that we're in right now?
00:02:52.020 --> 00:02:54.667
I think there's a few different things that I think about.
00:02:54.667 --> 00:03:05.134
One is this really rich conversation around the science of reading, or what is research-based instruction and what does research help us to know?
00:03:05.134 --> 00:03:23.389
And related to that, there's this real surge in legislative changes and new curricular adoptions in a lot of states in an attempt to better align practices and curriculum to what research tells us is most likely to work for most kids.
00:03:23.389 --> 00:03:27.229
So we're in this moment where a lot of teachers are being asked to change things.
00:03:27.229 --> 00:03:36.551
They're being asked to change their approach to literacy, the way that they structure their literacy block, even down to the kinds of things that they're teaching students during the literacy block.
00:03:36.551 --> 00:03:42.586
So what my work is often known for is just trying to take complex things and make them really practical and doable.
00:03:42.586 --> 00:03:55.526
So one of the things I wanted to do with this book was to create, use right away templates for planning lessons, together with examples of what it looks like when a lesson like this is done well.
00:03:55.526 --> 00:04:05.086
So a template of you know what is a, what is a read aloud lesson look like how do I plan for it, what kinds of things are you doing, anticipate, and then what does it look like when it's done well.
00:04:05.507 --> 00:04:17.891
At the same time, one of the other themes throughout the book is the importance of responsive teaching, making sure that we're not just sticking to a script, we're not just sticking to a plan, and that we've got to really look at the kids in front of us.
00:04:17.891 --> 00:04:21.105
And part of the responsiveness comes into play, of course, when we're planning.
00:04:21.105 --> 00:04:21.925
We know our kids.
00:04:21.925 --> 00:04:33.898
We know, for example, what their background knowledge is about a particular topic, and so we make adjustments to our plan to try to support connecting what they know already to what new information we're trying to teach in the lesson.
00:04:33.898 --> 00:04:42.771
But there's also responsiveness that needs to happen in the midst of the lesson, so we're watching students' faces and their eyes and whether they're with us and they're not with us.
00:04:42.771 --> 00:04:51.509
We see when they're engaged and when engagement starts to falter and teachers need to make adjustments.
00:04:51.509 --> 00:04:52.935
So we need to speed things up, speed the pacing up or slow things down.
00:04:52.935 --> 00:05:09.350
We need to pop in an extra demonstration that we hadn't planned to do because we realized they need a little more support, or we need to back up and offer a question and an opportunity for them to discuss, or we need to provide another example or change the way that we're asking kids to engage, to try to get the liveliness back up in the classroom right.
00:05:09.639 --> 00:05:20.690
So those kinds of responses and those kinds of adjustments are critical as well, and again, some of which we can anticipate and some of which we need to be ready for in the moment to sort of like improvise in response to what we see.
00:05:20.690 --> 00:05:23.021
So there's also a lot of support in the book for that.
00:05:23.021 --> 00:05:30.992
I think that matches this moment right now, because again, teachers are being asked to teach from these new core programs, these new scripts.
00:05:30.992 --> 00:05:40.668
Every time there's new core program adoptions we hear this phrase teaching with fidelity, which sometimes means just very tightly holding on to what that curriculum guide says.
00:05:40.668 --> 00:05:47.589
But really what we know from research is that the teacher's decision-making and flexibility in the moment matters a lot for whether or not the kids are going to be able to get it.
00:05:47.891 --> 00:06:00.843
So I wanted to offer again just a really practical, helpful how-to guide for teachers to help them see what kinds of ways they're going to make adaptations and what kinds of adjustments and responses they might need to make.
00:06:00.843 --> 00:06:12.564
So I unpack that within each chapter and then I also have video examples and annotated lesson plans where I talk about here's the changes I made, here's why I made this change, here's the adaptation.
00:06:12.564 --> 00:06:13.326
Because of this.
00:06:13.326 --> 00:06:17.485
This is what I saw, and so this is what I did to try to kind of walk teachers through that.
00:06:18.146 --> 00:06:28.754
I appreciate that, jen, and I think probably one of my biggest fears in teaching right now is that teachers are losing a lot of their autonomy and their ability to make professional decisions.
00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:46.129
I also think there's just a lot of static, there's a lot of noise right now as far as what is good for kids, and I'm just afraid that there are too many elements missing from the conversation, because we know that classrooms are really robust environments where every room is a little bit different.
00:06:46.350 --> 00:07:07.524
Every teacher's personality sort of plays into what that classroom community looks and feels and sounds like, as well as, of course, the kids and what they bring to the table of curriculum and curricular decision-making.
00:07:07.524 --> 00:07:11.059
Is that we're losing some of that richness of the environment and unfortunately, I think that often becomes counterproductive, right?
00:07:11.059 --> 00:07:16.851
Because when teachers can't respond to your point of you know we need to be able to improvise.
00:07:16.851 --> 00:07:23.766
In the moment, when teachers' hands are tied to do that kind of improvisation, I think that becomes really challenging.
00:07:23.766 --> 00:07:43.430
I think it can make the profession frustrating, and so I appreciate that your work not only looks at positive practices for kids, maybe best practices for kids, but also talks about how you make those decisions in the moment, because I think that it's just so critical to what teachers have always done.
00:07:43.430 --> 00:07:47.045
That, yeah, I appreciate that you sort of hold that as a central focus in your book.
00:07:47.526 --> 00:07:48.889
Thank you, lindsay, I appreciate that.
00:07:48.889 --> 00:07:55.062
Yeah, I think you know it is critical that we're informed by the quote unquote science right, that we look at the research, and.
00:07:55.062 --> 00:08:04.052
But I also think and I write about this in the book that there's a limit to what research can tell us, and there needs to be a place where you know we honor the science.
00:08:04.052 --> 00:08:07.166
We we use our best attempts at following what the science says.
00:08:07.166 --> 00:08:15.920
But Tim Rosensky talks a lot about this the importance of the art of teaching as well, that we make room for creativity and also professional decision making.
00:08:15.920 --> 00:08:17.665
But those two things are.
00:08:17.665 --> 00:08:19.870
They're not in conflict, they're hand in hand.
00:08:19.870 --> 00:08:23.906
We need to do both, and so what I hope I did in this book was to show both.
00:08:23.906 --> 00:08:27.615
I have these meaty sections with lots of research citations.
00:08:27.675 --> 00:08:41.687
But then I also talk a lot about the importance of teacher creativity and decision-making, and I'll be honest, I would not have wanted to be a teacher for as long as I did if I didn't have the ability to be creative, and I work with so many teachers.
00:08:41.687 --> 00:08:44.003
We are creative people and I work with so many teachers.
00:08:44.003 --> 00:08:44.464
We are creative people.
00:08:44.464 --> 00:09:08.448
Like part of what draws us to this profession is the ability to be creative, from you know, from the ways that we craft lessons to really connecting with our kids, and that means sometimes changing the text to a text we love so much and we want to bring in this beloved picture book to you know even the heart that teachers put into their classroom environments and what the room looks like, like teachers are creative people.
00:09:08.448 --> 00:09:17.552
So you stifle that and you tell teachers they can't be creative and they can't make their own decisions, or you dishonor the professionalism and their own experience and their expertise.
00:09:17.552 --> 00:09:22.014
It's not good for teachers, it's not good for the profession and it's really not good for kids.
00:09:22.014 --> 00:09:22.538
Ultimately.
00:09:23.679 --> 00:09:34.727
Oh, absolutely I couldn't agree with you more and I think that, yeah, that in my experience in classroom being in a classroom myself was one of the more challenging elements.
00:09:34.727 --> 00:09:47.196
It wasn't working with kids, that was always sort of the joy of it, but it was navigating heavy handed policies and procedures that did sort of take some of the joy out of that environment.
00:09:47.196 --> 00:09:57.706
So I'm hoping that teachers will feel armed to make those positive decisions, and I think in some instances, unfortunately, teachers have to defend their decision making as well.
00:09:57.706 --> 00:10:06.052
And so, you know, having resources to back them up research resources, practical application type resources I think is just really important.
00:10:06.799 --> 00:10:08.264
Yeah, I worked really hard in this book.
00:10:08.264 --> 00:10:12.043
I worked with two research assistants who helped me to access a lot of this research.
00:10:12.043 --> 00:10:19.029
Even as a professional book author, I couldn't get a lot of the research without somebody who had like university connections.
00:10:19.029 --> 00:10:20.822
Like that alone is problematic.
00:10:20.822 --> 00:10:24.490
So certainly teachers aren't able to access these research articles, right.
00:10:24.490 --> 00:10:32.373
So I had these two incredible research assistants and they helped me access a lot of articles and we read them together and discussed the methodology.
00:10:32.793 --> 00:10:43.186
300 of them ended up in this book, but I put them into these what research says, sections in each chapter like a really quick one page dense.
00:10:43.186 --> 00:10:49.923
You know, here's the all, the essence of what the research for the last couple of decades says about this particular practice.
00:10:49.923 --> 00:10:55.467
Here's what you need to know for that exact reason, like, do teachers need to read all these articles firsthand?
00:10:55.467 --> 00:10:59.107
I mean, if you're interested, go for it, but I think you really need to be more armed.
00:10:59.107 --> 00:11:00.511
That's a really great way of saying it.
00:11:00.511 --> 00:11:11.847
You need to say yes, this practice that I'm choosing to use is a research supported practice, and here are the studies that have found that this was helpful, so that you're ready to go when you're making those decisions absolutely.
00:11:12.764 --> 00:11:17.019
And you just sort of hit on one reason why the Classroom Caffeine Podcast exists.
00:11:17.019 --> 00:11:31.153
We know that teachers often cannot access research articles and often don't have the time to navigate them or to read and process everything that they say, particularly when you're talking about hundreds of articles around a particular topic.
00:11:31.153 --> 00:11:39.102
So it sounds like we are very much on the same page when it comes to giving teachers what they need in order to be armed for those conversations.
00:11:39.423 --> 00:11:42.772
And, on that note, what would you like listeners to know about your work?
00:11:42.772 --> 00:11:46.730
Or, maybe more appropriately at this point, what else would you like listeners to know about your work?
00:11:46.750 --> 00:11:48.815
be more, appropriately at this point.
00:11:48.815 --> 00:11:50.700
What else would you like listeners to know about your work?
00:11:50.700 --> 00:11:58.028
Yeah, I mean I think I want people to know that I've done the homework to synthesize and sort of distill the key research findings down.
00:11:58.028 --> 00:12:00.212
But I try to not live in the weeds of the research.
00:12:00.212 --> 00:12:02.845
I try to make it really practical because I am a teacher.
00:12:02.845 --> 00:12:12.820
I was a classroom teacher for a long time and I'm still every week in classrooms with teachers and all the videos in this book are me teaching students right.
00:12:12.820 --> 00:12:14.648
So I am very connected to the classroom.
00:12:14.648 --> 00:12:25.234
I'm very connected to the day-to-day of what teachers are doing and I really want to make resources that are practical and usable and helpful and really to the point.
00:12:25.234 --> 00:12:26.424
I worked really hard with my editor.
00:12:26.424 --> 00:12:37.071
I have an incredible editor, you know to cut down any unnecessary words and just get to the point as quickly as possible so teachers can turn around and use the ideas right away in their classrooms.
00:12:37.960 --> 00:12:55.200
Well, I think the idea of embedding videos in a book I know it's not brand new, but it is definitely a newer concept to have these video companions and I hope that you know when readers do see something like that, they take a moment to visit the video and see what it looks like in action.
00:12:55.200 --> 00:13:04.871
Because I think you know that's one thing that the world of literacy and literacy research tells us is that particular modes or formats are more conducive to conveying an idea.
00:13:04.871 --> 00:13:25.422
So, rather than writing out everything that you've done in teaching practice, watching a video can really help to highlight the most important aspects, to animate what it is that you're talking about, to add the nuance and to bring in that example in really important ways that I think don't just tell what the research says but actually shows what it looks like in practice.
00:13:26.004 --> 00:13:40.631
Yeah, so for me, I remember in college reading all these books about methodology and teaching strategies and my like year long methods classes and going into my classroom the first year as a first year teacher with this.
00:13:40.631 --> 00:14:07.629
What I thought was this idea, like I know what I'm doing, I know how to do this and I and just totally and completely I think we all have the same experience right, like okay, that did not go how it said it would in the book I read, right, and it wasn't until I had the experience in my second year yeah, it was my second year I found this woman down the hall who had a lot more experience than I had and I just said to her would you mind if I hang out in your classroom on my prep periods?
00:14:07.629 --> 00:14:14.917
And every time my kids were in art or music or gym or whatever, I would be in Lee Ware's class watching her.
00:14:14.917 --> 00:14:26.052
I was watching, like how she responded to the disruptive kid in the back or how she explained a concept or how she transitioned kids from one thing, like all the things that were hard for me.
00:14:26.052 --> 00:14:29.172
I was really watching and learning kids from one thing, like all the things that were hard for me.
00:14:29.172 --> 00:14:35.971
I was really watching and learning, and it was the live watching that did so much more than the thousands of pages of reading that I had done in college.
00:14:35.971 --> 00:14:36.474
And then I was fortunate.
00:14:36.474 --> 00:14:45.004
I went to a different school and I had a staff developer who came into my classroom and modeled teaching with my own students and again it was like oh, that's what it's supposed to look like.
00:14:45.004 --> 00:14:46.687
I see now, right.
00:14:47.168 --> 00:14:52.033
And so I have always found that when I work with teachers, I want to show right.
00:14:52.033 --> 00:14:57.168
So when I'm consulting in schools, I'm in classrooms, I'm not in a in a meeting room doing.
00:14:57.168 --> 00:15:04.552
You know, I do do full day workshops, but my preference is that we're in the classroom, I'm modeling with the kids right in front of you.
00:15:04.552 --> 00:15:14.407
You're now trying it and I'm coaching you and I'm giving you that feedback.
00:15:14.407 --> 00:15:15.551
So we're in the classroom doing the work.
00:15:15.551 --> 00:15:17.618
Or when I do do online workshops or full-day workshops, I use a ton of video and hands down.
00:15:17.618 --> 00:15:27.424
In the evaluation at the end, teachers always say it's the videos that were the most impactful, the thing that really helped them to see and be able to visualize what this would look like with their own kids.
00:15:28.025 --> 00:15:37.003
And so when I was conceptualizing this book, I actually started with thinking about what the video content would be.
00:15:37.003 --> 00:15:38.485
What am I going to show?
00:15:38.485 --> 00:15:41.961
And there's over four hours of video, of classroom video.
00:15:41.961 --> 00:15:45.490
So I would say, like, the video is probably 60% of the text.
00:15:45.490 --> 00:15:47.980
It's not like a supplement or an add-on.
00:15:47.980 --> 00:15:49.763
You have to watch the video.
00:15:49.763 --> 00:15:50.604
The video is it 60% of the text?
00:15:50.604 --> 00:15:51.504
It's not like a supplement or an add-on.
00:15:51.504 --> 00:15:52.125
You have to watch the video.
00:15:52.125 --> 00:15:52.966
The video is, it's woven into the text.
00:15:52.985 --> 00:16:02.495
So I, you know, I have a little section where I set up the lesson type, I introduce the video, I show you the lesson plan for the video, I annotate why I made changes.
00:16:02.495 --> 00:16:03.216
That I did.
00:16:03.216 --> 00:16:05.020
I show another video.
00:16:05.020 --> 00:16:22.153
Each chapter has several different video examples because I wanted to show small group, whole class, one-on-one, I wanted to show science, social studies, english language arts and how these lesson types work, no matter the content area and no matter the grade level.
00:16:22.153 --> 00:16:30.427
Right, I have little kids, big kids, like all the way through middle school down to first grade, so you could see all the different ages and different contexts.
00:16:30.427 --> 00:16:33.613
So the video is, I think, just critical.
00:16:33.953 --> 00:16:37.044
But I want to also say that the video is all real.
00:16:37.044 --> 00:16:38.447
It was all done in one take.
00:16:38.447 --> 00:16:40.192
There are no retakes.
00:16:40.192 --> 00:16:46.522
The only edits were to merge the two camera views together or to try to get this audio up so you could hear the kids a little bit better.
00:16:46.522 --> 00:16:51.832
To add captions, like I really didn't cut anything out or redo anything to make it look better.
00:16:51.972 --> 00:16:58.153
It is real classroom footage and I wanted to do that because teachers are teaching real classes.
00:16:58.413 --> 00:17:10.330
They don't have an editor who's, like you know, fancying things up after you do a lesson, and so there's moments, like in some of the lessons, where I'll ask a question and it's like crickets, nobody says anything and it's awkward for a second.
00:17:10.330 --> 00:17:14.967
And then I do something and I want to show you like, what do you do in that moment, right?
00:17:14.967 --> 00:17:19.605
Or I ask a question and the response I get is completely off base from what I even asked.
00:17:19.605 --> 00:17:20.827
Okay, well, what do you do?
00:17:20.827 --> 00:17:23.221
And I could have just edited that out and made it look cleaner.
00:17:23.221 --> 00:17:26.468
But I think teachers realize when stuff's not real, first of all.
00:17:26.468 --> 00:17:35.347
But second of all, I think there's real important learning as teachers to see the I'm not even going to call it mistakes or things going wrong.
00:17:35.347 --> 00:17:36.365
It's just real life.
00:17:36.365 --> 00:17:41.926
That's what happens in teaching is you don't get the response that you expected, and then you need to respond.
00:17:41.926 --> 00:17:43.326
You need to do something about it.
00:17:43.326 --> 00:17:47.652
So I wanted to show those real interactions because I think they're really informative and helpful.
00:17:53.160 --> 00:17:53.500
Oh, absolutely.
00:17:53.500 --> 00:18:04.108
And now, as you're describing these moments, Jen, I can picture them in my own experience, Of course either the you know you ask a question that you think is just going to be so compelling and everyone just looks at you.
00:18:04.509 --> 00:18:05.251
Yeah, yeah.
00:18:05.291 --> 00:18:18.557
Right, or you ask a question and you get an answer that is, or some response that has nothing to do with anything you anticipated, and so I think that those are the moments when it does require that improvisation.
00:18:18.557 --> 00:18:22.191
There is no script that can ready you for those moments, right?
00:18:22.191 --> 00:18:28.106
Like I often encourage my students and I teach pre-service teachers I encourage them to write down.
00:18:28.106 --> 00:18:43.221
You write down phrases that they have seen or that they have experienced themselves that help to generate conversation or help to bring conversations back on track, but to give themselves kind of a menu of possibilities so that eventually they have that in the back of their mind.
00:18:43.280 --> 00:18:47.585
Where, right, when nobody says anything, what do I do next?
00:18:47.585 --> 00:18:51.675
What is the phrase that seems to help generate conversation or bring us back on track?
00:18:51.675 --> 00:19:01.806
So I'm always encouraging my students to draft out a menu of phrasing for themselves that they can build on over the years, and eventually, I think you do end up internalizing those kinds of things.
00:19:01.806 --> 00:19:18.163
But when you're, you know, when you're first starting out, it can be very tricky and it can feel in that moment like some sort of fail Right, when really we know that that's just real life, that's just how that works, and so having something to say OK, where do I go next, what is my next move?
00:19:18.163 --> 00:19:20.032
I think is really, really important.
00:19:20.404 --> 00:19:22.228
Yeah, I have to that point.
00:19:22.228 --> 00:19:22.749
That's exact.
00:19:22.749 --> 00:19:27.776
That is exact idea of a menu of like what are the predictable things that are going to happen?
00:19:27.776 --> 00:19:30.220
I'm not going to say go wrong, what are the predictable things that are going to happen.
00:19:35.845 --> 00:19:42.333
You know, the structure of the book is that there's a few introductory chapters and then there's a chapter for each of the different lesson types I've mentioned already, like close reading, shared reading, reader's theater, conversation lessons, focus lessons and so on.
00:19:42.333 --> 00:19:48.500
And so within each chapter there's a table that says it's an if-then chart called responsive teaching, right?
00:19:48.500 --> 00:20:00.519
So if this predictable thing happens during this lesson type and it likely will here's what you can say or do or show, or here's how you can pivot to respond to what's happening in front of you.
00:20:00.519 --> 00:20:15.040
So I offer that table unique to each lesson type within each of those nine chapters, and I think you're right Over time, that goal is that you don't have a if-then chart in front of you, but rather you've just internalized that and you can just know what to do.
00:20:15.040 --> 00:20:15.884
You know the improv is a little easier.
00:20:16.805 --> 00:20:18.710
Yeah, that's so very important.
00:20:18.710 --> 00:20:28.159
The other thing I was thinking about as you were describing these videos, is that these kinds of resources really help us, I think, to expand our circle of mentorship.
00:20:28.159 --> 00:20:47.233
I mean, yes, of course, books and articles can offer some sort of mentorship, but I think whenever you see another teacher enacting these practices in real life with real kids in the moment, even if you're feeling like you don't have the support of a mentor in your own teaching environment, I think you can go to resources like this.
00:20:47.233 --> 00:20:54.993
And I know you also offer so many live and responsive resources through social media where you're responding in the moment to people.
00:20:54.993 --> 00:20:57.269
And so I think that that's one thing.
00:20:57.550 --> 00:21:09.854
I always want to encourage my students as future teachers, and anyone I work with to really identify where are their resources and how do you still feel connected to the profession and supported to do your best work.
00:21:09.854 --> 00:21:25.496
And I think that by watching other teachers, especially whenever just as you did right in your first year going to a teacher to say, can I just see how you're doing things I think that's so important and then also having someone, that's a bit of a sounding board, you know where you say I have this idea or I have this challenge.
00:21:25.496 --> 00:21:33.730
What do I do about it and how do I turn to the research, so to speak, and in positive and productive ways.
00:21:33.730 --> 00:21:37.538
That helps me to contextualize and to make the best decisions I can for my students.
00:21:37.538 --> 00:21:47.395
So, yeah, it sounds a little bit strange to say that videos can be a mentor, but I really do think that in modeling that practice, it can help us to expand our professional networks.
00:21:47.395 --> 00:21:48.557
Yeah, for sure.
00:21:49.165 --> 00:21:53.738
So I think we've already touched on a couple of the challenges of today's educational climate.
00:21:53.738 --> 00:21:58.297
But, given those challenges, what message do you want teachers to hear?
00:21:59.045 --> 00:22:05.519
I mean, I think another challenge that we haven't yet talked about is sort of how kids are changing.
00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:33.987
You know, and I think that I mean kids are always changing because society is changing, the context in which we're learning is changing, and I'm thinking about, you know, one challenge that I hear from a lot of teachers today I'm seeing with my own children, with my like daughters, my own children is just attention and focus and the challenge of competing with screens and not just social media.
00:22:33.987 --> 00:22:59.509
But I'm thinking like even some apps that we're using to engage kids with content that are gamifying things, that create these sort of dopamine rushes, and how challenging it is from the perspective of a literacy teacher to get kids and keep kids attentive and interested in reading pages in a book, that the kind of attention that's required to do that, to do that what Marianne Wolfe talks about this, this deep, engaged reading state.
00:22:59.509 --> 00:23:07.537
That's a real challenge I think that a lot of teachers are grappling with right now and losing kids engagement and motivation to read.
00:23:07.537 --> 00:23:15.938
So it's something that I think anyone that's working on literacy right now needs to be thinking about is how do we make our lessons more engaging?
00:23:15.938 --> 00:23:31.516
How do we ensure that the texts we're providing kids are engaging and what are some of the ways that we're engaging kids, the moves that we're making as teachers, that we're engaging kids within a lesson to keep their mind and attention into the text that they're reading.
00:23:31.516 --> 00:23:44.729
So that's another thing I was thinking about when I was writing this book and using structures like Reader's Theater, which is highly engaging and fun and motivating and gets kids to reread a lot and helps them with their fluency.
00:23:45.413 --> 00:23:58.217
Or how do I make a phonics lesson a little more engaging and what are the kinds of games or activities that I can engage kids with in a phonics lesson to make it more I'm not going to say fun, but like engaging so their mind.
00:23:58.217 --> 00:24:04.768
What I mean by engaging is their mind is really on it, you know, and their their heart is in it and they're really doing the work.
00:24:04.768 --> 00:24:06.549
They're not just kind of passively sitting there.
00:24:06.549 --> 00:24:11.898
Lots of opportunities for active response and doing things during the lesson.
00:24:11.898 --> 00:24:27.971
Yeah, or even I take like a close reading lesson where I'm asking kids to do like deeper level critical thinking and analysis, and I have a video where I'm using a Billie Eilish song and we're doing really deep work with a song they've loved and have heard a million times on the radio and it's about the text.
00:24:27.971 --> 00:24:30.493
They're really motivated to think more deeply about this text.
00:24:30.493 --> 00:24:36.097
So you know what are the ways that we can make this learning, this literacy work a little bit more engaging for kids?
00:24:36.097 --> 00:24:38.073
So that's kind of another thread throughout the book.
00:24:38.684 --> 00:24:43.297
Well, and I don't think that engagement necessarily excludes fun, right.
00:24:43.297 --> 00:24:46.275
But I don't think that engagement always looks like fun.
00:24:46.275 --> 00:25:06.231
So I think that that's an important clarification too is that we do want kids to be engaged, and I think that goes back to an earlier point that unless teachers are able to be responsive in the moment to what's going on in their particular context, it's really difficult, and in some instances I might even say impossible, to achieve engagement.
00:25:07.394 --> 00:25:33.406
Whenever you know if the teacher is not engaged, it becomes so challenging for kids to be interested and engaged in what they're doing Absolutely, and you know, I think about some of the was it NYU, steinhardt, I think, did a review of some of the most commonly used curriculum, or commonly recommended or on these approved state list curriculum, and they found that some of the texts are actually culturally destructive.
00:25:33.406 --> 00:25:34.489
That's not good.
00:25:34.489 --> 00:25:36.573
That's not good at all.
00:25:36.773 --> 00:25:39.526
No, no, that's not good to say you know, okay.
00:25:39.586 --> 00:25:57.155
So like on the word, you know, on a scale of like bad to the worst, like that's the worst, do we absolutely want to say all right, teacher, you have the ability to take that text, decide to not use it and find something else suitable in its place that's going to be culturally responsive and engaging for your students?
00:25:57.155 --> 00:25:57.817
Absolutely.
00:25:57.817 --> 00:26:01.153
But there also might be, you know, like you said, the teacher might be like this isn't.
00:26:01.153 --> 00:26:02.406
This is not interesting to me.
00:26:02.406 --> 00:26:06.438
I cannot sell a six week unit on birds.
00:26:06.438 --> 00:26:07.842
I on birds, I'm afraid of birds.
00:26:07.842 --> 00:26:12.057
I had one teacher talking about she was afraid of birds and she had to teach this curriculum.
00:26:12.057 --> 00:26:14.247
That was like all birds for six weeks long.
00:26:14.247 --> 00:26:20.832
Like, okay, is there a way that we could make some adjustments here so that the teacher's a little more into it, the kids are a little more into it?
00:26:21.133 --> 00:26:31.175
And sometimes it's the text, and I offer a lot of advice in the book for how to create conceptually coherent text sets and where to find texts and different texts that work well for different kinds of lesson types.
00:26:31.175 --> 00:26:45.190
But I also think sometimes it's about changing the methods, so saying, all right, this text is great, right, but the way that this curriculum is suggesting that I use this text is not going to be engaging for kids.
00:26:45.190 --> 00:26:51.472
So I'm going to change this from a independent task where there's just a read this and answer questions at the end.
00:26:51.472 --> 00:26:54.672
Or I know the kids are going to be like just you know, looking for the answers.
00:26:54.672 --> 00:26:56.425
They want to finish it as quickly as possible.
00:26:56.807 --> 00:27:03.509
I'm going to change this to a read aloud where I'm going to insert some opportunities for them to stop and sketch or act some parts out.
00:27:03.509 --> 00:27:10.804
Or I'm going to change this to a reader's theater lesson where they're going to get to take on the roles of the characters and act it out and reread it a lot.
00:27:10.804 --> 00:27:14.372
So the teacher should have the ability to change the lesson type, the text.
00:27:14.372 --> 00:27:25.973
Again, you're bound to the objectives, you're bound to the standards, you're bound to the outcomes, but I don't think we should be shackling teachers to like the minutia of like.
00:27:25.973 --> 00:27:30.994
This is the procedure of the lesson and here's how the lesson has to go with this particular text in this particular way.
00:27:30.994 --> 00:27:40.596
We need again to make room for the art of teaching, allow teachers to be creative and flexible, and I hope that my book helps them to make those adaptations.
00:27:41.224 --> 00:27:55.395
Yeah, I think that that's a very important idea and also I do think that it comes through, at least in my mind, loudly and clearly in all of your books that this is about teacher autonomy and it is about doing what's best for the kids who are right in front of us.
00:27:55.976 --> 00:27:57.978
So, yeah, I could not agree more.
00:27:57.978 --> 00:28:04.962
I think that that is a critical element of teaching that I'm afraid is getting a little bit lost in the shuffle in recent years.
00:28:04.962 --> 00:28:09.969
A little bit lost in the shuffle in recent years.
00:28:09.969 --> 00:28:11.251
Thank you so much and thank you for your time today.
00:28:11.251 --> 00:28:12.775
Thank you for your contributions to the field of education.
00:28:12.775 --> 00:28:24.253
As I said, I feel like your books really do offer, as you mentioned, that sort of cut through to get to the point of what is research telling us and how does that translate to classroom practice.
00:28:24.253 --> 00:28:34.377
Because I think that that's another thing we've sort of lost sight of in the science of reading conversation is that sometimes research isn't really translatable to what happens in the classroom.
00:28:34.377 --> 00:28:38.913
But your books, your resources really do support that translation.
00:28:38.913 --> 00:28:40.999
So I thank you so much for that contribution.
00:28:41.500 --> 00:28:42.566
Thank you, thank you.
00:28:43.200 --> 00:28:47.132
Jennifer Cerevalo is an expert in literacy teaching strategies.
00:28:47.132 --> 00:29:05.039
She is the author of the Reading Strategies Book 2.0, the Writing Strategies Book Understanding Texts and Readers, a Teacher's Guide to Reading Conferences, teaching Writing in Small Groups all published with Heinemann and most recently, teaching Reading Across the Day, published with Corwin.
00:29:05.039 --> 00:29:14.471
Her resources are aimed at helping teachers make goal-directed, responsive strategy instruction, conferring and small group work accessible in every classroom.
00:29:14.471 --> 00:29:25.369
Jen is a frequent invited speaker at national and regional conferences and travels throughout the US and Canada to provide full-day workshops and works with teachers and students in classrooms.
00:29:25.369 --> 00:29:32.190
She's also an experienced online educator who regularly offers live webinars and online workshops.
00:29:32.190 --> 00:29:50.884
She's also authored two self-paced, asynchronous online courses Strategies in Action Reading and Writing Methods and Content and Teaching Reading in Small Groups Matching Methods to methods to purposes which you can access through her website at wwwjenniferceravallocom.
00:29:50.884 --> 00:30:02.035
That's wwwjenniferceravallocom.
00:30:02.435 --> 00:30:10.872
Jen holds a bachelor's in arts degree from Vassar College and a master's of the arts degree from Teachers College, where she also taught graduate and undergraduate classes.
00:30:10.872 --> 00:30:17.723
She began her career in education as a public school teacher in New York City and then began consulting throughout the country.
00:30:17.723 --> 00:30:28.144
She has more than 15 years experience helping teachers to create literacy classrooms where students are joyfully engaged and the instruction is meaningfully individualized to students' goals.
00:30:28.645 --> 00:30:54.707
You can learn more about Jen and her work at heinpub backslash saravallo that's h-e-i-n dot p-u-b backslash s-e-r-r-a-v-a-L-L-O on Twitter or X at J Saravallo, on Instagram at Jennifer Saravallo, or by joining the Reading and Writing Strategies Facebook community.
00:30:54.707 --> 00:31:02.308
For the good of all students, classroom Caffeine aims to energize education, research and practice.
00:31:02.308 --> 00:31:07.028
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00:31:10.767 --> 00:31:16.967
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00:31:43.867 --> 00:31:48.883
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00:31:48.883 --> 00:31:50.546
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00:31:50.546 --> 00:31:58.631
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00:31:58.631 --> 00:32:01.625
As always, I raise my mug to you teachers.
00:32:01.625 --> 00:32:03.029
Thanks for joining me.
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