Many teachers find themselves responsible for teaching reading without ever having been taught how the reading system actually works.
In this episode, I share an observation from a recent professional development workshop with a newer teacher working with high school students. She was trying to respond to what her students were doing, but didn’t yet have a framework to interpret what she was seeing.
This is something I see often.
Teachers care. They are trying. But without a clear understanding of how words are structured, how sounds map to print, and how skills develop over time, it becomes difficult to make instructional decisions in the moment.
I also reflect on my own experience. I was not taught how to teach reading in my preservice training. My understanding developed over years of working with students, particularly through teaching the Barton Reading and Spelling System, and through repeated exposure to patterns in student responses.
In this episode, I talk about:
Why are many teachers left without a framework for teaching reading
The difference between reacting to errors and interpreting them
How background knowledge develops over time through repeated exposure
Why concepts like schwa require multiple encounters to fully understand
What shifts when teachers begin to look more closely at what students are actually doing
This episode is for teachers who are trying to make sense of what they are seeing in their students and want a clearer way to think through instructional decisions.
