I Was The Teacher Who Didn't Know How to Teach Reading! - O

I was a teacher who didn't know how to teach reading. Can I tell you about that today? How would you like to hear how it was all turned around. I'm also wanting to offer you an invitation to a free event that's just for you that's related directly to this story. During this event you'll witness you're struggling or striving readers make gains you probably never thought possible with just 5 minutes a day for 5 days. We'll also have prizes and free resources at this event so stay tuned. So I'm gonna get started telling you the story about how I was a teacher who did not know how to teach reading but before I do that I want you to share, do you have kids that you feel like you're not really reaching? Maybe you have had students that you didn't quite know how to get them to get on grade level. Share that with your fellow teachers. Don't use names just use student pseudonyms but I bet even, even though you guys are probably a cut above because you're here looking for professional learning on a weeknight when everyone else is maybe watching something on Netflix. So even though you're cut above I bet you have encountered this challenge of feeling like I don't know how to get this kid to figure out how to teach to learn to read and why do I think that well the stats are pretty scary in the u.s. almost 65% of fourth graders are not proficient in reading and internationally although many countries do better they don't do a lot better so the odds are that we are almost all of us faced with kids where we're not meeting the bar that we might have set for us ourselves as teachers so go ahead and share that if you are brave and bold enough tonight because it is a reality if we teach reading and that's why here at really simplified I even exist I have gone through this pain of not knowing how to teach reading and finding a way to streamline classroom and reading instruction and also accelerate reading achievement for students so I want to share with you tonight how it kind of all got started and how one key activity really turned it all around and that activity is gonna relate to that free event that I am mentioned to you so I'm dr. Marnie Ginsberg and I'm glad you here tonight go ahead and share where you're from what you teach and also share if you have a concern about a kid or several kids that aren't really making the cut for reading so let me tell you about my story so um in the 90s a little while ago I was a public school teacher I was a middle school teacher and I was teaching after I taught in seventh grade in the Pennsylvania area I went to North Carolina I was teaching sixth grade mostly I was teaching language arts at that point and I had a class where I noticed that the kids were even though their sixth grade reader level they were reading like fourth grade on average so that was really upsetting to me but it really got kind of scary the next year I was in that same sixth grade English classroom and I had two kids that could not even read dr. Seuss like hop on pop have you been there have you seen that kind of gap with your students it's scary isn't it thumbs up if you've experienced that where your kids are way behind what they should be and so I had a master's I had paid attention in class I had even gotten mostly all A's but I've had a reading class I had a degree in how to teach English um but I did not know what to do with the whole class in general but specifically these two boys and I knew that their lives were on a very bad trajectory if they could not read hop on pop and sixth grade when they were 11 going on 12 what would they do in this world and I was kind of panicked and I felt responsible I felt um I felt guilty I felt embarrassed and I also felt a little bit angry because I had paid attention I did what I was supposed to do and I'd even know how to stall the fundamentals have you been there it's not fortunately it's not that uncommon melodies here melody sunshine what a beautiful name from Ohio thanks for saying hi if you're just tuning in I'm sharing how I was once a teacher that didn't know how to teach reading and I'm opening up to you if you have students that are frustrating you and you feel like you're not reaching them share about that without saying names because it's very common so while they were I was this in sixth grade English teacher and I had these two boys and I want to tell you about them to say were they're very this really ingrained in my mind this was a real turning point for me in my life as a teacher one of the boys was named I won't say his name I'll call him Jeremiah and he was this really bubbly effervescent personality super popular really cool um really socially connected and really savvy I was always kind of watching it like wow it's amazing that he's so in tune with what's popular what and and and had a sophisticated understanding of social dynamics this really played out it's quite striking when I did read Aloud's I read aloud almost every day I remember reading aloud like where the Red Fern Grows the Great Jilly Gilly Hopkins or running out of time and I would ask some kind of question like well why do you think the characters doing this and he always had a super insightful explanation that was kind of years above his his peers so I was so struck by the fact that here was this kid who was exceptional leader exceptionally savvy about human interaction and he could not read hop on pop it was just not right he had so many gifts so much potential and I really wanted to help him but just reading aloud to him while it was exciting and building his vocabulary and helping him catch on to something it wasn't enough right he needed to learn the code welcome an our friend from Canada Renfrew counting so this boy again Jeremiah I was very disturbed about him he had extraordinarily weak visual I mean visual weak memory no matter what I did just working memory just nothing seemed to stick and I didn't know how to get him from A to B to C to D so that was Jeremiah the other one was kind of like his contrast and this other little boy young man I'll call him Eddie he's kind of more the stereotypical child at this point he knew that he was 11 and he couldn't read and he was pretty irritated with the whole school situation he was sullen I rarely saw him smile he didn't have a lot of friends it was hard to draw him out he didn't want to engage in school and things that I wanted them to do things that other people wanted him to do was kind of hard to reach him and so both of those boys Eddie and Jeremiah ended up being my little projects one spring when I finally found something that was going to that it seems it would make a difference for them but before I found something I had searched high and low I had scoured the Public Library I had scoured the University Library fortunately I was near to the University of North Carolina and they would allow you know the public to go in there so I looked at row after row of books on how to teach reading and one book would say you know immerse them in language and literature which I was doing but that wasn't teaching them how to read the words and another book would say show them flash cards of letter-sound another one would say here's a hundred and one different activities you can do but it was like just throw a hundred and one activities at me as a teacher like where's the plan what's step one is the first activity that I do and if I do it how do I know when I'm successful what's the goal like it was just you know too much so I finally found something that worked it was I still remember seeing it one day I was the endcap of the store bookshelves had Barnes and Noble and I skimmed through it and I was like home I told my husband we've got I'm gonna have to buy this and this is this is the ticket and that was the book called reading reflex and it really did open my eyes to see how you can teach the code how you can teach decoding to kids like my Jeremiah and my Eddie so I pull them aside as much as I could you know before school after school during channel 1 if any of you have ever seen that news program that we had a while back in at least in American classrooms for kids so I pulled them aside because I had like 80 kids and I'm supposed to be teaching 6th grade language arts I didn't have time I liked tutor and catch them up it was pretty tricky but I I you know finagled as many free moments as they could with usually with each of them individually because they were in different classes and one would come during the morning and one wouldn't but they wouldn't come all that regularly and so it's kind of catch as catch can and finally I got to go for my Spring Break yeah I got to go and get more in-depth training on this approach and I spent $750 of my own money back then and drove seven hours up to the Philadelphia area to get training to learn more about this a program and that's that helped even more I got more of the gist of it all and so the house I can spring break maybe April ish and so I really put a lot of time into pushing those boys and trying to get them to figure out how this thing called reading works so it's pretty excited then at the end of the school year they did the star test and they were both reading at like the third grade mid mid 3.3.5 range the middle of third grade so you know I started in the spring and they made several gears of brew so that was good it was kind of on the way but there were still sixth graders 11-year olds who were reading like mid third grade and I I knew they weren't gonna get that support next year so it was just kind of like really striking to me that I didn't know what to do and I had really worked hard at figuring out and I was on to something but I still didn't quite have all the answers so I really pivoted in my career and decided to leave the classroom and just teach privately and keep studying this thing called reading and I've been kind of obsessed about it ever since so as I tell you more about this story I want you to be I want you to be on the lookout for how I'm gonna invite you to something that relates to this story because there were a couple of activities that I did with these kiddos that move the needle for them and those are refined variations of that are things I've still used to this day that are part of that reading simplified system that gets kids of all abilities even those struggling kids even those those that have learning disabilities or have been identified dyslexia these things that I've I had an early sense of back in 1998 they've become something that I've been obsessing about and really have streamlined now so I want to share with you how you can get involved in an event regarding just one of these activities it really is a powerful transformative activity so we're gonna get there and so I've got a few um highs to uh to offer before I tell the end of my story so we've got melody from San Antonio as always thanks for being here melody and Joanne from Victoria welcome so we got our Canadian contingents and some Americans I'm glad you guys are here if you want to share some times where you have struggled with the teaching of reading for your your students or even now or in the past I'm sure your colleagues out there throughout the world would be grateful to hear cuz I'm not the only one that was a teacher that didn't know how to teach reading maybe you've come a long way like I have but maybe you still encounter some struggles or maybe you could just share the type of stroll you had so when I changed my career because I realized I mean just a slight change I'm still a teacher right but I was gonna focus on reading and I went to get a doctor at the University of North Carolina while I was there I just read tons and tons and tons about how kids learn to read and about phonemic processing and how they hear sounds and how that relates to whether they see the symbols accurately and can learn to read and spell I developed a program at the University of North Carolina that was used in multiple states in the US where teachers did activities like I had learned originally and saw big changes with their struggling readers we got statistically significant results for all reading measures including comprehension so it it was possible to turn things around and I've gotten a lot better over these over the years continuing to tutor kids continuing to watch other teachers tutor or work in the classroom and also doing just lots of research and reading I'm kind of obsessed about that this whole field and I have been ever since then and I don't really know what happened to those kids called Jeremiah I'm calling Jeremiah and Eddie I know that I made a difference that year but I don't know if it was enough right because third grade reading and going into seventh grade still really is not where we want to be so because of my Jeremiah and any experiences and because I've heard from so many of you who have felt very similar about the struggle 14 of her how to teach reading and how to deal with the overwhelm I'm gonna be throwing a little a party okay so we're gonna have a special five day event where I just want you to spend five days four five five days doing five minutes of activity every day so you can take one kid or you could take one small group or you can take a couple small groups whatever suits you and I just want you to try one activity there's this one activity that I used with Jeremiah and Eddie a variation on it that I've now kind of refined that has continued to really unlock decoding for every student that I have encountered so I'm excited to share that activity with you and I'm also excited to coach you and I'm also excited to have you brag about how your kids are moving up each day and I'm also excited to give some prizes out so I'm gonna announce a little bit more about that but first let's see who else we've got here we've got sue Bill's from upstate New York welcome sue and Aleta I haven't seen you in a little while you too welcome in Oklahoma so thanks you guys for being here anybody else okay so um this event I'm calling the level up your readers achievement in the next five day so we're gonna start on Monday we'll have a little preview bonus on Sunday if you're able but the main teaching will start on Monday just like we are now here on Facebook live and I'll go live for five days in a row same time 8:00 p.m. Eastern and if you can't be there live you can catch it on the replay because it'll be in the Facebook group that I'm hosting a private Facebook group and what I want you to do is to try the activity switch it which I'll coach you through I'll give you the resources all the resources you need for free to get started and I'll also be giving out some freebies okay so let me share those fun things with you are you ready for freebies Katie I'm glad that you're here yeah there is and Denise from Jamaica cool we are really all over the globe now so let's see are you ready to see what the freebies are for our special event this event is really tied to my story about how I couldn't figure out how to teach reading because it boils down to a couple of core activities and the one that I'm going to coach you through in the special event is the heart of them all and it it is the first domino that tips everything else down so I'm so excited for you to learn about that so if you participate in the Facebook group in this special event starting next Monday March 12 and if all you do is put it by participating just write a comment in the livestream like we have here where you say I worked with Group one and I did list one and they could do you know sure a but they couldn't do CVCC you just make a short little list about what they could do or what they couldn't do or what level you're on kind of notes just a short summary about how they did and we'll be picking five winners every day so it's five by five um every day they'll be as winners so one day we'll have some winners get this very comprehensive switch it lists of for multiple levels this is the core this is the laser list for the core activity I'm gonna coach you through and if you have already done switch it then don't feel like this can't be helpful it's still inspirational it's kind of a little game we're gonna be playing you're gonna challenge yourself to see what you can get done with just five minutes with one group or one kid every day and another day will give out some some sort it packets like this this is sort it for the I sound for first grade these are great for learning advanced phonics and there's passages in there so we'll give this out a different day I really love this one the island it's got a lot of I sound words and some kids always like the story and it's good pictures another day will give out the maybe a higher level this is a packet of word work for second grade so there will always be a chance to get a prize but even if you're not winning the prize we will also be giving away the resources the free resources you need to be able to do the activities okay then we're gonna have a macro prize so if you do if you participate by writing in the comments five days just a little snippet about how your student did then you'll be entered in a drawing for a big prize let me show you what it is I have this really fun word work pack that I've created that I want to give to one member of our community a simplifier who is participating in this challenge that's coming up and so what is in here are is boxes that target a particular sound see if I can get it open the right way I don't want it to all fall out so for instance this sound eh we've got some ACTU little objects in here that relate to the sound a so students who work beginning the a sound might want to match a picture an object like a mailbox with the word card for mailbox or maybe they've linked it with apron or tray so we have some objects and some pictures this one's so cute look at this a rake oh my gosh so you got different spellings of the a sound soos is so cool thank you I know I love it now it's still gonna be challenging till not lose some of these objects I know how it is in classrooms but if it's a special thing that the class treasures maybe there's a way in which it can be protected for the most part so that is what I want to invite you to participate in and if you have already signed up for this level up your readers challenge way to go make sure it's on your calendar be on the lookout for emails from me but also go into our new private Facebook group so if you and if you've already signed up just look for level up your readers achievement in Facebook search and you'll find it you haven't signed up there's a link in the comments to sign up and you'll be directed to that Facebook group and that's just a private free Facebook group where we're gonna be sharing our winds of about how this one activity makes a difference and I'm very confident that you'll see some transformation I'm gonna be showing you the transformation that a young boy had that I got to work with about a year ago I worked with him every day just like I'm asking you to for just 5 to 8 minutes and you'll get to see me coach him you know so you'll see the nuances of the activity particularly how to give feedback really moves them up pretty quickly so some of you I know Lolita your I knew that was a concern I had some challenges with this month so I know you have spring break if you have spring break and you're at home consider trying it with a child or a grandchild or a neighbor and if you can't just can't do that you know put some notes in the comments about this is my reflection on this this is how what I learned that was new so if you can at least do that that will still enter you into the contest okay because I know that it is spring break it's not the best timing so Aleta says spring break but she does use the resources daily and in her after-school tutoring group I always get great motivation from listening to you so you'll be tuning in that's awesome it does help to see other teachers in practice like I'm so sad and in many places were just behind closed doors we don't get to see what other people are doing and it's very inspiring it's not that you don't you can't think of all of these things well it's hard to think of all these things because frankly you don't have a lot of time for thinking right but just some on some time for reflection and new ideas or reminders and what you've already known is super helpful but um I also want to say for those of you who haven't tried switch it I think you will be blown away by what it can accomplish if your kids cannot seem to memorize high-frequency words or if they seem stuck in not becoming more fluent or if all the phonics knowledge that you've been dodging them with is not sticking the roots of it is almost always because they don't have strong sound symbol connections and switch it solves them it gives you a strong foundation on which to build everything up above it and it's so powerful how it happens so quickly for kids with dyslexia for kids who are typically different developing for kids who are gifted for kids who are just plain old typical it works really fast you'll see that in the videos but you'll also see it in the comments we I have done this challenge twice now this will be our third one for a reading simplified community but it's been a year since we had our last one and teachers from all over pour in with oh my gosh I can't believe that this was able to happen you know teachers who've been working with children and they dry one new activity just for five minutes and they see the doors opening up for their kids so if you've signed up join that Facebook group level up your achievement and can you a night a friend because this is very powerful we don't want anymore stories like the story for Jeremiah and Eddie do we that's why we're in this career we want to see all children able to read and succeed in school and then life thereafter right so if you and can tag a friend tell a friend share it to your friends so that they can see for themselves how powerful switch it is they don't have to be a believer you don't have to be a believer yet just give it a try you'll get some free resources what do you got to lose but you'll see what it's like for me when I'm working with a student who is a struggling to get started struggling reader and then you'll also hear from other teachers all over the world about how they're finding this activity how does that sound that you guys alright I am going to sign off unless there is any last-minute comment have you signed up give me a thumbs up what do you guys say have you signed up yet can you find a link it's reading simplified com forward slash level - and remember that we've got lots of freebies coming to you just for participating and the chance pretty good chances that somebody will win some of these packets of resources right these are things that we have right now only in our paid membership part of our reading simplified academy which is where I teach these these core strategies that have really saved so much time for my students and teachers all over the world but you can get a little sneak peek if you win these freebies so let's see are there any other comments if you come in here later and you have a question about the the challenge let me know again the whole point is that you will watch an activity in action you'll try it yourself and you'll be motivated because we're gonna share with one another what's successful and what questions we have you'll also get extra resources and when you see an activity in action it'll give you a lot easier time of implementing it yourself and I know many folks who are here are are using switch it so if you have any good tips about that let us know if you've seen progress sue says she's definitely gonna sign up great thank you for saying that sue I can't wait to see how it turns out for your kiddos I was really blown away by the the impact that we were able to see last year at the two challenges where we did the same same sort of thing except we didn't have as many fun prizes but teachers really were saying that the kids loved the activity because I thought it was a game so unmotivated kids were doing it they would they were finding out that that kids were breaking through with letter-sound knowledge they found that that phonemic awareness was getting a lot better they found that it made them better spellers they found that they were finding it easier to read and then the interesting thing as teachers would notice oh I'm seeing a lot as far as assessment is concerned that helps me understand what's going wrong or what's going well with this student or this group of students so it kind of is like a two-for-one it's a great activity but it's also a dynamic assessment for you to keep a window into what's going on with your kiddos so katie has been experiencing switch it she is teaching her youngest or a young little fella I don't know if he's your youngest and she says that switch it is amazing and her little guy is progressing he really is we've been able to watch that progress in the reading simplified Academy so thank you Katie alright it was great to hang out with you guys tonight I'm so excited for this coming event be sure to sign up by to invite a friend and get pumped for just happy giving yourself five minutes a day to tackle one activity and you'll be amazed at the transformation that can happen in such a short period of time so I'll see you this coming week at least on Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern on March 12th and we may do a little preview bonus activity on Sunday so keep an eye out make sure you're in that Facebook group so you can get immediate access to all the resources and we'll see you soon okay good night