Brain Friendly Reading Strategies That Actually Work

Vicki Davis (00:05): Today’s episode is brought to you by the Educators Studio from Van Andel Institute for Education. If you’re a K through eight STEM teacher looking for classroom tested lessons, hands-on projects, and time-saving resources, you can get an annual membership for only $9.99 using the promo code COOLCAT. More on this after the show.

Vicki Davis (00:32): So excited today to be talking to Malia Hollowell. We’re going to be talking about reading. Her website is Playdough to Plato dot com. She is the author of the Science of Reading in Action Brain Friendly Strategies Every Teacher Needs to Know. So what are these brain friendly strategies for reading?

Malia Hollowell (00:54): This is my favorite subject, Vicki, and I’m so excited to share just a couple of them. One of them is taking our sight words or our spelling words and actually sorting them by phonics and spelling rule. When I learned how to teach reading, I didn’t learn a whole lot. I’m of the era back in the early 2000s where we were told that students can magically learn how to read by just looking at books that they’re interested in.

Of course, now we know that is not true. We have seven decades of research that have proven that is just not the way that most students will learn how to read. They really need us as teachers to help them connect the dots. So taking our sight words in our spelling lists and sorting them is one of these simple little tweaks that we can make that will help them connect the dots a lot faster and a lot easier. So what you’re going to do is take your list and rather than having students learn these words in the order that you’re given them, you are going to sort them by the phonics or spelling rule that is the primary focus of that word. So let’s take a word like can. We would teach that word can when we are teaching students about the short a sound. And not only would we teach them the word can, we would also practice the word am or and all of those short vowel words that have that short a sound.

Now it sounds really simple sorting it can take some time, but I promise the payoff is going to blow your socks off. It really helps students focus on just one phonics or spelling rule rather than having to stretch their brain and understand the huge range of phonics and spelling rules that we usually throw at them.

Vicki Davis (02:29): So I was a child of the phonics era. And I remember if it was an we had pan and can and man we had all those at the same time. I never remember getting the word list by the rules, but I remember learning them that way. So it just makes sense. Can you get these word lists just already pre-sorted for teachers? I know one thing about AI, it’s terrible at alphabetic and it cannot do the phonics.

Malia Hollowell (02:48): Yes. We’ve actually tried to use AI for writing decodable passages based on one phonics or spelling rule, and it is a — I agree with you. We’re not there yet. But yes, we have pre-sorted lists that teachers are able to download from our site and they will do all of the heavy lifting for them. So they don’t have to sit for hours and try and figure out where the word said belongs in the sequence.

Vicki Davis (02:56): So what’s another brain friendly rule?

Malia Hollowell (03:16): Well, let’s stick with sight words here because I know that a lot of teachers are required to teach them in their classroom, either sight words or spelling words, and this will work for both. So I was taught that when we are having students learn these words and memorize these words so that they can recognize them when they see them in books or in text, that we need to give them a stack of flashcards and we need them to drill those flashcards five times a day, every single day, all week long. And what we now know is that is not how students memorize words. We do not use our visual memory. Instead, we have a human superpower for spoken language. We have this magical ability as humans we’re born, to be placed in the middle of a home and listen to the people around us speaking and communicating. And we can naturally learn how to understand what they’re saying and then speak back to them.

So we want to use that to our advantage as teachers. We want to take our human superpower for spoken language and apply it to this new skill called written language. And so what we’re going to do is have them actually listen for the sounds in the words first. So if we’re practicing the word can, we would have them say the sounds, k-a-n. We can make this by having them actually tap on the table or on their hands. So k-tap, a-n, tap, nn, tap. Now we’re going to have them connect those sounds to the written letters. So we’re going to have them again, say each sound, kk, and this time they’re going to write the letter C. When they say a, they will write the letter A, and nn, they will write the letter N. And now their brain has been warmed up. It started with superpower for being able to hear those spoken sounds, those tiny little parts of the word, and we’re bridging it and connecting it to written language.

Vicki Davis (04:57): One of my children is dyslexic. One thing that we learned to do, because, you know, it did take him longer to learn to read, he’s a great reader now. But I like how you’re breaking it down and you’re giving the steps because it just makes sense.

Malia Hollowell (05:11): Once you learn about the research, it does make sense. It’s almost like you hear these facts and you think, why aren’t we doing it that way?

Vicki Davis (05:18): Yeah, okay, you got a —

Malia Hollowell (05:19): Yes, I’ll actually stick with dyslexia since that is personally relevant to you and your family. So what we actually know is that on average, 20% of our human population will be affected by some level of dyslexia. That is important for educators in particular to know because learning how to support our dyslexic students is essential. We’re going to have one out of five students on average in any classroom affected by dyslexia. So it’s really important that every single teacher on this planet is able to effectively support them. And the good news is that dyslexia support is actually going to benefit all kids.

What we know helps them is to focus on the sounds. Dyslexia is actually largely an auditory processing difficulty. When babies are born, within hours they can put wiring on their head and measure how the baby is processing sound. They’ll be able to predict with incredible accuracy whether or not that child will be affected by dyslexia because they will process the sound differently.

Malia Hollowell (06:20): So as classroom teachers, we can help students by giving them opportunities to practice hearing sounds and words and moving those sounds around. And you’ll notice here, I did not say we’re gonna have them practice looking at letters and moving those sounds around. This is not a visual activity. We are just focusing on hearing. So if I gave that word again, can, to the class, I would ask them to break that word apart into its individual sounds. C-A-N.

Then I might say, let’s change the k in can to mm. What’s the new word? Man. Then I might say, let’s change the n in man to d. What’s the new word? Mad. And now we could keep going down the list, creating this word ladder, we like to call it, where we’re changing just one sound at a time and having students get practice, not only hearing the sounds, but moving those sounds around.

And that it’s going to help, again, every student in class, but especially those students with dyslexia who have a difficult time hearing that sound and moving it around. We want them to have the opportunity to practice over and over and over again, get lots of review, lots of opportunities to strengthen that skill.

Vicki Davis (07:28): Let me ask you this. You have something really interesting on your book byline. You said that Instagram doesn’t always get it right. Now we know that’s true, but could you give me some specific examples of like, okay, I think Instagram is getting this wrong.

Malia Hollowell (07:45): Yes, I’ll give you one that I certainly believed for years and years and years. I believed that using leveled reader books was the way to go. And when I say leveled reading books, these are books that are published by publishers like Fontus and Penel. They have an entire series of these leveled reading books. And you’ll know they’re leveled readers because they’ll usually say a number on the cover. So it’ll say level A, level B, level C. Now, what’s interesting about these books is when you open them up, to any page, you’ll notice a couple of things. If they’re a book that’s designed for new readers, so a level A book, you’ll notice that very words are going to repeat. So it will say, I see a red dog. And there will be a big red dog on top of those words. And it will give those picture clues to students about what the words actually say. And you’ll turn the page, and it will again say the same words. I see a green frog. And there will be a big green frog.

Now, what we now know is that number one, it’s not really reading. That is not giving students the chance to figure out how to sound out words they haven’t seen before. It’s giving them a chance to memorize patterns, notice patterns, apply repetition to their reading. It’s also giving them great practice at gathering picture clues. But again, that’s not reading. What we want to do is we want students to really focus on gathering and strengthening the skills they need to sound out unfamiliar words. And the best way we can do that is to make sure we’re giving them the chance to read words that reinforce the phonics and spelling rules we are teaching them. So if we are teaching that short a lesson in our class, we want students to read books that are filled with short a words. We want them to be reading man can stand.

So that’s one example of again, so many I could give you where Instagram does not always get it right. And I will say literacy curriculums don’t always get it right. And teacher trainings don’t always get it right. I am shocked at the number of times that I’ve gotten a DM or an email from a teacher who has taken a picture of their teaching manual and it’s showing outdated strategies and outdated tips that we now know are not only not based on science, but they actually go completely against the research.

Vicki Davis (09:58): Wow. You know, reading is just so important because it unlocks everything else. But it seems like… How do I say this? So Instagram is all about selling, we have to be really careful as educators getting our knowledge off of an Instagram or social media type site because there’s a recency bias. And a lot of times the time tested research just aren’t being talked about because old stuff doesn’t usually go viral, right? So where are the communities that reading teachers are congregating these days?

Malia Hollowell (10:26): While Instagram does not always get it right, there are several Instagram accounts that do get it right. In fact, I would say there are probably more than several. There are probably a hundred or more. It’s doing your due diligence and finding the sources that you can trust that are backing up their statements by being able to give you the source or the research or the citation of the scholarly article that defends what they’re saying. And if you are ever in doubt, do not feel shy about reaching out to that Instagram influencer or creator and asking where they got this knowledge. They will be able to very quickly send you the link to the article or the study if that is in fact how they got the fact or that recommendation.

Vicki Davis (11:08): So let’s give a pep talk to reading teachers everywhere and even parents. What’s your encouragement for that?

Malia Hollowell (11:15): I find great comfort in the research that shows that with brain-friendly strategies and tools in place, 95% of students can learn to read by the end of first grade. Knowing that with the right research-based strategies, we are able to help every single child in class become a thriving, successful reader is incredibly empowering, and it gives us hope.

Yes, we may need to lean into the research. We may need to learn about the science of reading and make some tweaks and changes to our curriculum and our lesson plans. But once we do that, once we have our system in place, we will be able to benefit these children not only this year, but for years to come. Every class that comes through our doors is going to benefit from the time that we’re taking now to learn what is best practice.

Vicki Davis (12:02): So your website Playdough to Plato has a lot of free resources. What are some of your most popular free resources that people can go in the show notes, follow it to your site and download?

Malia Hollowell (12:15): Well, I will make sure to send all these links to you. One of my favorites is our editable sight word games, and we have a lot of them. The reason I love them is because, as we were talking about earlier, we know it’s really important to give students the opportunity to practice reading and writing words that they are actually learning about. So when we’re teaching that short A lesson, we want them to read and write those short A words. Well, traditionally, before we had technology, you would probably have to go and make one short A game to use in your literacy centers and a different short E game. That takes a lot of time and we know teachers are busy. So we wanted to make it really fast and easy for you to take the same game and pop in the words that you need students to practice that week, print it off. And then if you have a different group of students who needs to practice a different phonics skill or a different spelling rule, you can very easily pop in those new words and print off the same game that is highly targeted and differentiated for a different need.

Vicki Davis (13:10): Awesome. Have you tested any of the AI reading tools out there? There’s a free one from Google, free one from Microsoft. Other folks have free ones. Have you tested any of those?

Malia Hollowell (13:21): I have not. My focus is really on pre-K through second grade. One of my core beliefs is that it’s really important for us to give students the opportunity to have as much hands-on experience as possible. I am a huge advocate for giving students the chance to interact and engage and play literacy games with their classmates and sit across from each other at the table and roll a die, and move their little, you know, five spaces and come to the new word. So for me, that is my soul. And I am just a fierce advocate for that hands on engaging practice.

Vicki Davis (13:55): We have to be so careful about too much screen time for younger kids. So there may be a place, but it’s not every place. And they’re also learning a lot more than reading. They’re learning how to collaborate, cooperate, get along with other human beings. And that’s still as important as it’s ever been. Malia Hollowell, her book is The Science of Reading in Action, Brain-Friendly Strategies Every Teacher Needs to Know. I know you have a podcast. You have a website. Thanks for coming on and talking about reading and the science of reading. It’s just such an important subject.

Malia Hollowell (14:24): Thank you so much for having me.

Vicki Davis (14:25): Before you go, I want to tell you about today’s sponsor, the VAI Educators Studio from Van Andel Institute for Education. Do you know how it feels when you just find that perfect lesson that works? The VAI Educators Studio is packed with classroom tested lessons, hands-on projects, and skill building activities designed specifically for K through eight teachers. Plus you get on demand professional development and a community of educators who get it. I’ve been exploring their resources and love how they’re built to save you time while sparking real creativity in your classroom. You can get 50% off membership to the Educators Studio by using the promo code COOLCAT when you sign up. So head over to coolcatteacher.com/vai. The VAI Educators Studio, because great teaching should not mean endless prep. And remember, use the promo code COOLCAT.