SW Ehle

Hello. My name is Holly Ely, and I wanna look

me to our informal session today on sound walls.

Using a science of reading toe help kids learn how

to spell.

Just wanna introduce myself a little bit.

I am a current kindergarten teacher.

I'm also in early literacy specialist.

I hold my master's degree in early literacy, and I'm

also currently working on my doctorate in reading at language

and Literacy with Concrete University Chicago.

And so I am just super passionate about learning all

about really literacy in the best practices that I can

learn to bring it to my kiddos in the classroom.

And so that passion in general for early literacy has

really It brought me over the last year to dive

deep into the research, um, of the science of reading,

to learn all that I can in order to bring

the most effective instruction to my classroom.

And so I'm also a good friend of Deanna, and

together over the past year, we have read countless books

and, um, enrolled in the different workshops through letters and

Orton killing him to learn all that we can, because

what we're finding is that there is just a huge

amount of end up research that has not really been

presented to active classroom teachers.

And so I am just really passionate about taking all

of that research and kind of helping to bridge the

gap between research and practice.

And so I'm Deanna, and I literally air on the

phone about every day, talking about what we've learned and

how we can help, you know, share that information with

teachers and one of the areas that I have really

kind of focused in on our sound wells and how

sound wells are kind of a new thing.

Um, to most teachers and how they really bring about

the science of reading is proving to be most effective

as a way of helping our kids in our classrooms

learn how to be great spellers and then really great

readers as well.

So let's just die right in.

And I might ask you a question.

Have you ever used a traditional word while in your

classroom? I know that I definitely have.

And if you haven't, you probably are pretty familiar with

what they are traditional word walls.

Let me show you over here.

Have a slight for you usually look something like this.

Um, you have the letters of the alphabet posted up

on the law and underneath you have whole words posted

in alphabetical order.

Word walls promotes reading of whole words, oftentimes memorization of

whole words as what a lot of people call sight

words. Technically reading researchers only use that term sight words

in regard to words that someone can look at and

read like automatically.

So, um, when I talk about high frequency words, what

I'm referring Teoh is what a lot of teachers use

that term sight words for high frequency words or those,

you know, little words that we find in print everywhere

and that we we really want our kids to learn

how to read so that they can re text effectively.

But traditional word walls often have lots of high frequency

words on them.

And, um, I don't know about you, but I've struggled

in the past with traditional word balls.

So my second question for you is if you have

had a traditional word while in your classroom, how has

it worked for you?

Do you find that it is like, truly effective as

a tool, which is it is intended to be a

tool that helps your kids independently Problem solved to SPO

in my classroom.

Like I said, I actually struggle with traditional warbird walls.

You know, I start that you're every year trying to

be pumped up and excited about it.

Pointed out to my kids.

Try to get really excited every time I put a

new word on the word wall and during writers workshop,

Mykonos get stuck.

I tried to refer them to look to the world

while and it really just has not mattered what I've

done. Um, in the end, it just hasn't seemed to

work out to be a tool of that kid's independently

use on their own.

Two problems off at best, it's It's a tool that

I I do the problem solving with.

Like I might say, the word your looking for is

under this letter, and it's the 3rd 1 down because

they struggle with independently being able to search and find

what they need.

So let's just take a moment to think about that

traditional word wall from a student perspective, and I think

it might kind of open our eyes to how limited

a traditional word wall is okay, So let's just say

I have a student who isn't writers workshop and has

a sentence that he would like to write.

Something happened at recess with his friend and his friend.

Fell down to a story for the day.

Is that child hurt his knee?

Right? So my student, um, is sitting down on the

table and has this paper outs ready to work starts

a story that child hurts his knee that you that

you know.

That's a word that he uses often when he talks,

right? You know, that's word.

It thinks he's probably even seen in some books that

he's read, but that he cannot remember how to spell

that word.

So he knows that I've talked about the world ball

as a resource in my classroom.

So he goes up to the work long and he

says that word that thinks about the first sound because

he knows that the word wall is arranged in alphabetical

order. That okay, now if my student understands only that

concept of alphabetical order and let's be honest, a lot

of our struggling readers like to comb striving.

Readers struggle with knowing fully what alphabetical order is.

And so it's not easy for those struggling readers to

even find the letter that they need.

But let's just say that the student does, um okay,

so that what letter is he looking for?

Is he gonna find a letter on our traditional word

while that represents that first sound?

No, he's not.

Because even the letter t that that word actually starts

with does not represent the the T.

H sound.

Now, if he already knows the beginning part of how

to spell that word of that, he might be ableto

look upon the wall, find it and figure out how

to spell the rest of it.

But let's think about that for a second.

In order for him to figure out how to spell

that using the word wall, he already has to kind

of know how to spell that word.

So how effective is that?

If you have to really know how to spell part

of the word in order to figure out how to

spell the word Yeah, that's it.

That's the tricky part, right?

Okay. And I think about the rest of history.

That child hurt his knee.

What about when he gets to the word me, and

he's trying to find the word me on the word

of all me.

What do you think it's gonna look?

You probably gonna look under the letter end if he's

really good with his letter.

Sounds right.

Is he gonna find them Bernie Under N No.

Because if the word knee was up, there would be

under K, because that's what it begins with regard to

swelling. Right?

But let's be honest.

More than likely, the word knee is not going to

be on our word wall.

We know one of the limitations of a word wall

is that you cannot put all of the workers in

the English language up on that wall.

So we tried to typically only put words that are

like high frequency words or words.

We think our students will use more on a daily

basis, So that's another tricky part.

If we have kiddos who are constantly looking at the

word wall to look up words that they know of

the words that they want to spell and they're not

finding them and they kind of get turned off and

don't go back to the word wall like I know

every year I have kids with specific interests, like maybe

I kid who likes write stories about dinosaurs.

And so when he goes to the word wall four

different times and the words or the dinosaurs vocabulary that

he's looking for isn't up there.

He quits using it because he knows it's probably not

gonna be out there anyways.

Right? So you can probably really you can probably think

of examples of your own.

If you have a word wall in your room, I'm

on how it's not really working in regard to it

being an independent tool for your students to problems.

All right.

Okay. Well, just think back to your word wall or

award while you seen.

And I want you to just think of what types

of words that you might have on your word law.

So think about the letters like a and I O.

S and T.

You can even pause this if you want to.

And right, jot down a little list of words that

you might put under those letters.

I'm gonna show you some of the words that I

often have on my word wall under these letters.

All right, so under a I have about an ad

under eyes.

He is If it oh of over often.

Let's just think about these words.

But you probably will find on most word walls, right?

If a student during writers workshop is trying to write

a story about dinosaurs and they are trying to write

the word about, uh uh, you're saying that sound?

Uh, they're thinking, What letter makes that sound?

Uh, they're probably gonna look under you for a like

umbrella, right?

Uh, they're gonna find the word about.

Probably not.

It's under a Let's think of the word of that.

Word is used all the time in student stories.

Uh uh, of do you think they're gonna look under

over of when it makes that kind of short u

sound A.

You take a look at some other letters.

What if your student is writing a story and it

includes the word she sh Is there an alphabet letter

that makes that sound?

Not unless they already know the spelling.

To begin that word like she write and think about

t words.

There's so many high frequency words that begin the T

age where w age and so using a traditional word

wall really is very difficult for students to, especially beginning

beginning writers to use in order to actually figure out

how to spell a word, they kind of we're gonna

have to already know how to spell it in order

to find it on the word wall, which kind of

defeats the purpose a little bit right, all right, Lo.

One thing that we know about the science of reading

and the science of reading is basically a large body

of research that has definitively shown how students brains work

and how students learn how to read.

Over the past several years, doctors and reading researchers have

used functional MRI's on students, strong readers and struggling readers,

dyslexic creators and actually been able to see what is

happening in the brain and how kids are actually learning

how to read.

And so it's so exciting for us as teachers because

we now actually know exactly how our brain is processing,

and so the science of reading takes that information and

is giving it to us and helping us change our

instructional methods in the classrooms that we're teaching most effectively

because we have a major problem in our country.

And according to statistics, between 40 and 60% of our

fourth graders are reading below proficiency.

And so I encourage you to look in your own

district. Look up the numbers, the statistics in your state

and see how many students are reading below proficiency.

Um, I'm just going to take a moment to tell

you that I was trained in the university, Um, at

a time where we were learning that balanced literacy was

the best practice and we were understanding the balanced literacy

we thought at the time was taking the best of

all approaches and blending them together to provide our students

like a balance of everything.

So we're teaching them a little bit of fun.

Eggs. We're teaching them whole language comprehension, a little bit

of everything.

And we thought we were doing the best that we

could, but this time we were doing the best that

we could.

But what we know now from the science of reading

is that by taking parts and during our small groups,

you know, supporting different learners with different pieces of information

that in the end we're leaving some pretty big holes.

And so as a kindergarten and first grade teacher.

We have leaders that looked pretty strong and the strategies

that were using, like, say, the first part and think

it would make sense or look at the picture.

We're kind of teaching them these guessing strategies, which worked

out OK in kindergarten first grade, even in the second

grade. But the problem is that when students get into

third and fourth grade and they're reading multi syllabic words,

they're unable to problem solve and just look at the

picturing guess.

And so they really need a strong, frenetic foundation.

And the science of reading has shown that there are

things that, um, we cannot get around.

We have to explicitly systematically teach these skills to all

students. So, um, that's what we've learned from the science

of reading and what they're saying now.

The best way to teach students is an approach called

structured. Literacy is very structured, especially in kindergarten and first

grade, and in order to teach kids all the all

the skills that they need.

So that's kind of the starting point for us and

moving forward with some new methods of instruction

SW Ehle

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated