Addressing students' reading needs early makes all the difference.

That's why we're so excited for you to hear from Linsey Jones, a speech-language pathologist, doing incredible work with kindergartners through a smart, research-based intervention.

Linsey shares how she identifies students for support, what her targeted small group sessions look like and the real growth she's seeing.

You'll leave this episode with practical ideas and a lot of inspiration to take back to your own classroom or school.

Hi, teacher friends.

I'm Lori and I'm Melissa.

We are two educators who want the best for all kids, and we know you do too.

We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.

We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing.

Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.

Hi Linsey, Welcome to the podcast.

Hi ladies, Thanks for having me.

I'm so excited to be here today.

Yeah, we're so excited to dig in with you about all the amazing work that you're doing.

Oh, thank you so much.

Yeah, I'm excited to share it with your viewers.

Yeah, and so, Linsey, you're a speech-language pathologist and you're doing this really powerful work with early reading intervention, which is not always where speech language pathologists end up, but you're doing this work with kindergartners.

So I'm wondering if you can just share a little bit about how your role as a speech language pathologist actually led you to this reading intervention.

Yeah.

So I think it's actually kind of a neat story how everything kind of came together.

So early literacy has always kind of been a strong interest area of mine.

But the field of speech pathology is so vast and it's so big that sometimes we can't really like hone into certain interest areas that we have as much because we have to service, you know, large caseloads and do evaluations and therapy and all the things.

But I think since COVID I've noticed an increase in the number of students that we service, their complexity of needs, and so I kept going back to like early literacy and early intervention and how could we catch these kids a little bit earlier and maybe make an impact like long-term on you know, the workload and the caseload that we have in a school because it's big for everybody, right?

So I developed actually two intervention programs.

The one we'll talk about is obviously the one that deals with phonics, but I also have another one that deals with speech, sound interventions specifically for SLPs.

Um, and you know we piloted the programs.

They had great success.

Um, as speech pathologists we are experts in differentiated instruction, so that really lent itself well to developing the program and really like honing it and making it the most effective thing we could make of it.

And so, as we were developing that, I really had to put a lot of trust in like our kindergarten teachers and our literacy coaches and things like that and rely on kind of a collaboration model to get this up and going and to be successful.

So that's kind of a little background of like how a speech pathologist finds themselves in this like world of literacy.

You know, obviously language and literacy they overlap a lot, but SLPs aren't oftentimes like the lead person doing an intervention that has to focus on phonics and language language.

So yeah, overlap was the exact word I had in my mind and I was thinking back to.

We actually had a kindergarten teacher on years ago who talked about how she worked with her school's SLP to, you know, refine the work she was doing in the classroom.

So there's just so much overlap between the work you all do regularly and what's happening in a kindergarten, first grade classroom for sure.

Yeah, there is and I think a lot of people don't fully realize that all the time because they think you know we're working on sounds and things like that kind of the traditional SLP role.

But we really are trained in so many things phonics, phonological awareness, language you know that language piece that comes in with reading comprehension, I mean it's all kind of intertwined, obviously.

So.

And I'm wondering too.

You mentioned, you know, often for intervention people just usually just want to go to a program, right, Like, which program should I adopt?

My students need help.

But I'm wondering what made you want to create your own pro?

You know you said you developed this program, so what made you want to do that, instead of just using something that was already out there?

Yeah, that is a question I get asked all the time, like what program are you using?

What program are you using?

And I want to be like super clear that at a tier one level, a program and a curriculum is awesome, right, you need something that is really rooted in.

Who's going to benefit most from this and how are we going to capture the most number of kids with this instruction?

So great for tier one, right, we want a really robust curriculum or program there.

But for tier two, when you're really looking at, why are these kids not responding to this tier one or why is it taking them longer to maybe respond to the tier one instruction, them longer to maybe respond to the tier one instruction?

You know we really want to differentiate and so programs can be a helpful guide, but they don't always lend itself to be flexible and responsive to what the particular student needs.

And as SLPs, we differentiate all day, every day, and very rarely will we, will you find an SLP using a like quote program and and so the data really drives our instruction and it drives our therapy.

And so I wasn't.

It felt kind of natural to not adopt like a program but really listen to what the data was telling us, and kind of develop like sort of like a treatment plan from there sort of for our students.

That is amazing.

I feel like every time I talk with a speech language pathologist, I want to just say like you make you all make me want to go back to school to be a speech language pathologist.

I feel the same way I asked.

I've been.

I looked at programs the other day too.

After talking with Linsey on our pre-call, Come join come join the field.

Come join the field, melissa and I will just do it together.

One more thing I that I rope her into, all right.

So we know that.

You know this is hard work.

You're making it sound easy.

You're like, yeah, I developed this program, we implemented this, or not program we?

I developed and implemented this intervention I should say intervention program for maybe lack of better word.

But you know, we also know that you've got some help along the way.

You shared that you worked with Julia Linsey, who is a friend of the podcast.

She's the author of reading above the fray.

She's been on our podcast a few times but I'm wondering if you could share how her work has influenced the phonics and the speech sound instruction happening at your school and what you've implemented in this intervention.

So Julia has been such an awesome resource for me.

She has influenced my program to be the most like streamlined and effective thing that it can possibly be, and I know that our students have benefited so much from her guidance and her research on what gives you the most return on investment, what's the best bang for your buck when you're working with these students, because we don't have a lot of time with them, right.

So our interventions are intense, they're short, and so we want to make sure, like, what do we prioritize, what is our sequence of skills and how do we really maximize instruction?

Her research and you know, just kind of ability to bounce things off of her like bounce ideas off of her has been so very, very helpful.

So she participated in some professional development with our district and that's kind of how I got to know her initially.

So she's been great to kind of help balance that research driven instruction and practical application of that right, because we can have all the research studies we want but if we can't implement them, then it's, you know, not very helpful.

So she's been great to kind of help me bridge that gap.

Yeah, I.

Actually.

One thing that I think about is researchers who are able to really speak the language of teachers.

I love talking with them the most because I feel like it's, so it helps me understand what I'm actually supposed to be doing better.

So that's kind of what I'm hearing you say, like she's kind of talking the language of teachers, like she can interpret the research but can share it in a way that you're able to understand and helps you implement what you're doing.

Yeah, absolutely, and it's been great to just kind of see over the last couple of years implementing the program and how it's changed and how I can just kind of make it better and more efficient, even though we're getting really great results anyway.

It just feels so great to know that we're doing the best that we can by our kids and we're giving them, you know, the most up to date research and instruction All right.

So let's dig into some of that practical stuff that you talked about.

We want to hear what you're actually doing and we want to start with assessments and data.

So, just starting with, you know we're talking about kindergarten here.

So these are students who are coming into school, maybe never having been to school before, just starting to learn letters and sounds, and they're just at the beginning of their journey on learning how to read.

What kinds of assessments are you giving, what kind of data are you looking at and what are you looking for in that data to know who needs this intervention?

So that is a wonderful question and something that we've kind of worked on developing over the last couple of years of like how do we collect data that is really meaningful for us as well?

So all of our kindergartners are screened in the fall right when they come in.

We have a team of people that look at kind of a multi-layer of assessments.

So we look at some standardized assessments, we look at some phonemic awareness assessments, we look at some classroom awareness assessments, we look at some classroom-based teacher data like letter, sound identification, that kind of thing.

And you know, these kiddos that are coming in are they have such a wide variety of skills that sometimes you've got kids that know all their letters and all their sounds and maybe they've been to a preschool program, and then you've got other kids who this is their first school experience and so they're really kind of behind the eight ball already in comparison to their peers.

And so we really try to combine this quantitative data with teacher observation to get a well-rounded picture of what our cohort looks like, and we really want to flag those kids early that may be a little bit behind so we can catch them up to speed on to where they are.

So we really look at, you know, kind of like I said, a multi-layer assessment data, and then the nice thing about having this on all of our kindergarten students across the whole district is that we can see what our cohort looks like as a group.

So everyone is going to be different, right.

But if we look at them as an entire, for our district we have 10 classrooms, 10 kindergarten classrooms, and if we look at them, okay, where, where's, what's their learning profile, what's their kind of literacy profile, right?

So we can kind of get that on each and every one of our kids.

Yeah, I think one of the things that stands out to me and I feel like this would be a resounding answer from every kindergarten teacher, every SLP who works with kindergarten students is just the variance in the students coming in and just they're all kind of all over the place in their acquisition of skills, and so that I I'm just thinking about how your strategy to just get in there and to close the gap as quickly as possible, right when it starts, and like actually kind of like proactively do this is really important.

Yes, it is, and it it's easier to do when they're younger, right, you have less room to make up, and so, um, and and we'll talk, I'm sure, a little bit about this a little bit later but what we're finding is that by the time these kiddos are finishing kindergarten, they don't look that different from one another, so the variance has become very small.

Which impacts has?

Like global impacts, right, like instruction, tier one instruction and fewer kids in intervention.

So, yeah, they start off with a huge scatterplot of skills and as the year progresses, they look.

The kids in my tier two program look almost indistinguishable from the tier one kids, which is awesome.

That is amazing.

Yes, and we'll talk more about that later, for sure.

I am curious.

I just want to stamp, though Is the biggest thing?

You're looking for the letter sound knowledge.

Okay.

So that is one of the big things that we definitely look at is letter, sound knowledge and identification.

But we're also looking at early phonemic awareness skills and we do like a kind of a battery of subtest assessments with that and where we look at where their skills are and kind of how they deviate from their peers in that way.

So they're coming into kindergarten.

We don't expect them to be able to blend and segment a CVC word right, Like that's not what we are expecting them to do.

But when we look at the whole group we can say, okay, this cluster of kids, they look different than their peers as far as the data goes.

So they're looking statistically significantly different from their peers as far as the data goes.

So they're looking statistically significantly different from their peers.

And that's how it kind of helps us identify, you know, if they need to be in a tier two program or not.

So we look for those skill gaps and then kind of form our groups from there.

We do this in a couple cycles throughout the year, but that's what it kind of looks like in the fall initially.

Okay.

So, Linsey, once students are identified for support, you've done this robust battery of assessments what does your tier two intervention really look like?

I mean, I know you said it's not a program, it's driven by what students need, but what does that look like in actual practice every day in the classroom?

Like I have so many questions about this.

Does that look like in actual practice every day in the classroom?

Like I have so many questions about this?

Who's who's doing the intervention?

When is it happening?

How often, you know?

Is it in small groups?

Is it in, uh, you know, maybe a semi whole group situate, like what happens?

So can you tell us all the details here?

Yeah, like, what are the nitty gritty?

Right?

Like, how does it?

How does it look?

So, um, I do all of our intervention for our district.

So, like I said, we have 10 kindergarten classrooms.

It's across three buildings, so I'm kind of all over the place.

But it's fun, we make it work right, like it's great.

Sometimes I do have the help of SLP interns.

So I do work collaboratively with some local universities here and I do take student interns, like in the fall and in the spring, and they are very helpful in data collection, they're very helpful in forming groups and things like that.

So really, once we have identified these group of kids that need to be receiving tier two instruction, we'll kind of divide them by skill gap level.

So like, what do they need help with?

So are they really showing a need for letter sound identification or are they looking really different from their peers and being able to identify the first sound in a word, things like that?

So we'll kind of separate them by group that way, and then it's kind of off to the races.

So I'll see them about two to three times a week for 15 minutes a piece and it's typically in small group format.

It's not a lot of whole group.

So a couple of years ago we made some videos that really focus on like the articulatory features of sounds and things like that that teachers can play for more of like tier one instruction, just kind of as another resource.

So we don't do a lot of whole group and mostly because our tier one instruction is really robust anyway.

So they're doing not only like their ELA curriculum but we also supplement with a phonemic awareness program.

So they get a lot of that and then it's sort of you know, skill targeted after that.

So, yeah, I'll see him a couple times a week for 15 minutes.

Small group, probably two to three kids.

As we get going in the year.

If we see that someone needs more individualized instruction, then it's very easy to just see that kiddo one-on-one.

So we can very easily make adjustments that way based on what they need.

Linsey, I love that you keep it short, because I have a kindergartner at home and I know more than 15 minutes would be.

You know, on one thing, it can be a challenge for sure.

I'm wondering how do you make the most of that time and really get it?

I'm just going to sidetrack real quick.

So my son does martial arts and it's only 30 minutes long and they do so much in that 30 minutes.

I'm always shocked.

I'm like how did they do all that with these little guys?

You know, and and I'm just wondering how do you, how do you do that with the little ones and like, get the most out of that 15 minutes?

Yes, Can I?

Can I jump in, Like, do you have a specific like routine that you can share?

I'm just curious.

Maybe, maybe not, but is it like in 15 minutes I'm going to do bop, bop, bop, bop?

It's like a four-step routine, a five-step routine, a three-step routine or it's different.

Like you said, it's different for each group of kids.

Yeah, no, that's a great question because it's not just like you open a manual and you're on lesson one, right, and then you do this instruction.

So it does look a lot different.

So in the fall maybe we're focused a little bit more on letter sound identification or identifying the first sound in a word, whereas now we're wrapping up the year and our kids are past segmenting and blending, they're on to like decodable books and things like that.

So the sessions look really different depending on the time of the year.

But super brief, really highly focused, um, we're working really on blending, segmenting and incorporating letters, um like physical letters, into every session that we have.

So those are kind of like the three main areas that we really want to focus on.

Sometimes if we have to like back up to teach a concept, then we can do that easily.

But those are really the three big areas that we want to hit every single time Blending, segmenting and then those letters and sounds, kind of combining all of that together.

And I will say one thing that I have done this year is I've really incorporated like a multisensory approach into every single session that I have with kids.

So what are your articulators doing?

How are they moving.

What is working when you make this sound?

I see a lot of speech related errors with my kids, even if they don't have speech and language needs at all.

So, for example, they'll put voicing in when there shouldn't be voicing in a sound or, you know, they'll mix up like an M and an N.

You know some letters that are very similar.

I see it all the time, and so using a multisensory approach where we incorporate a lot of pictures along with like physical manipulators that we incorporate a lot of pictures along with like physical manipulators that has made a world of difference with our kids.

So I'm sure to include that in every session we do.

That's so neat.

So are you talking about?

And just for clarification, because when you say you know physical manipulators, are you meaning like you touch something?

And I'm obviously thinking when you're saying a picture.

It's almost like a, like a sound wall card where you can like see right, see the mouth and where it should be.

For example, if I'm saying remember, and I have a kid saying remember, I'm going to be able to see that on right on the sound card.

But what would be like a physical manipulator?

Like a letter tile, something like that.

How would you use that?

Like, how does that work, okay, so, yeah, so an example of what this would look like.

Let's say we're going to blend and segment, like a CVC word, like man or something like that.

So I will have, kind of like um, some placeholders for each sound right, kind of like the boxes that we would use.

Sure, like I'll code in boxes Yep, yep, um.

But at the beginning, where we're trying to figure out, okay, what does our mouth do, first, in the word man, I'm going to have like a sound wall picture, um, to have them start so they know how their mouth is starting.

Um.

And then, similarly, at the end, I'm going to have them start so they know how their mouth is starting.

And then, similarly, at the end, I'm going to have a sound wall picture that has the picture for N, so they know how their mouth is ending.

And I find that when kids are really starting to first understand that concept of blending and segmenting, they get the segmenting right and then they go to blend it and they're like wait, what does my mouth need to do?

And having that visual there kind of takes that cognitive load off of them to be able to like oh yeah, I need to put my lips together and do this.

So, um, I use actually I made my daughter um, do these pictures for me, cause I wanted more like robust picture cards, and so I mean to take all these pictures.

I'm like do an S, do a TH, do this sound, do this sound.

And so that's actually what I use with all of my kids, because I can then talk about how the sound is made.

Is it a stream of air?

Is it a pop of air that's coming out?

Is it continuous sound?

Is it made in the front of the mouth, the back of the mouth, so, um, so we talk a lot about that.

So the multisensory piece is a huge um, a huge part of every single session, and if you've done letters training, I mean, that is like the whole pieces is how um important you know articulatory features are, and it is big.

Yeah, and I would you also use mirrors in there too, so they can see themselves.

Yep, and they love that right.

They're kindergartners and they are like oh, I love this.

It's fascinating where your mouth is moving and you know when you're six.

Try to make a sound.

It's amazing you know that's funny that you said that, though, because at the beginning in the fall, there is a lot of it Does your mouth match this picture mouth Right?

So if they are going to do some early like sound identification and a CVC word, does your mouth for the S sound match this?

You know, picture wall, picture, and even the concept of does it match, does it not match is something that takes some time for them to learn, so I think anytime you can incorporate visuals and like a mirror and things like that, it really helps them a lot.

Linsey, I'm also curious about handwriting, like, do you have them writing letters?

Because I mean this is new to them too, right, and that can be a challenge for our kindergartners.

Yeah, yeah, so, along with some of the activities that I kind of like made for my kiddos, is definitely a handwriting component, and in the fall it might look a little bit more like tracing right, because they're going to get handwriting in their tier one instruction but then in tier two, how can we make sure that they're really forming those letters correctly?

And so we may segment a word, um, associate the letter tiles to the sounds, and then they trace um the particular word on, like a, you know, a dry erase marker board or whatever.

So, um, that is definitely something that's so important and it really helps like kind of bring everything together for them.

Is there anything else about like that you're doing during this intervention time that you wanted to share?

We do a lot of repetition and a lot of feedback.

So I think when you don't use a structured program and you're really going off what the student needs at that particular time, you have to be really good at providing feedback that they need at that particular time.

It's not like, oh, you were close on that or oh, nope, this is the word They'll get it.

They'll get it later, yeah.

Right.

So you have to be really specific with the type of feedback that you give the students.

So that would be kind of another thing that takes a little bit of getting used to.

And I know if I have interns they're kind of like this is sort of foreign to me.

I don't know how to instruct, but I think a lot of it is intuitive.

We just have to kind of like bring that out in ourselves.

All right.

So I just want to bring it back to the assessments again.

So you know you said you're continue to be responsive to students needs throughout, and you know, I'm sure there's probably a point too where you say like I don't think they need this intervention anymore.

So what does the assessment look like along the way for you to continue making those decisions?

Yeah, so we provide frequent progress monitoring on our students and it goes in line with their baseline data that we already collected in the fall, right.

So everything's really streamlined for our teachers because the point is not to give them one more thing to do, right?

We want to streamline all of this, so we've been really intentional about doing that and all of our data kind of aligns with the report card, so we're not duplicating things and just the whole headache of that.

So once we have that baseline data and we're seeing the students, then we'll progress monitor them and after about like eight to nine weeks we'll meet.

I'll have a meeting with our kindergarten teachers to kind of look at the data.

Sometimes we'll have additional like standardized data if the testing kind of falls in that area, and we'll update.

We have everybody on like an Excel sheet so we can kind of track how they are progressing.

So we have got like real-time data right there of exactly where the students are, and that's some of the feedback from the teachers is that they know exactly where their kids are all the time and how great that is.

They can just like pick up and go with them, and so we will kind of say, okay, this kiddo has made really great progress in tier one and tier two.

They can go back to tier one.

They don't need my services anymore.

Um, but this kiddo is not responding as much in tier one, so we'll put them into tier two.

Um, and then some kids just need to stay where they're at in tier two, right, like they're, they're progressing, but they're not quite where they need to be.

So, um, several times a year we'll look at all the data and kind of move kids in and out that way, and of course, kids move into the district too, so those are usually the kids that we need to get in right away.

Yeah, so important for that flexibility.

I'm really glad that you brought that up and that it is not just a one way street into tier two and that the I mean the obvious idea is to get them what they need and then send them back out.

So exactly to that, to that um effect, would you mind sharing what kind of progress your students have made?

Oh my gosh, this is like the most exciting.

Yeah, this is your brag fest.

Go ahead.

I know, I know this is so cool.

Okay, so this is the end of our year here in Michigan and we have about 180 kindergarten students district-wide and we have a very, very, very small percentage of kids who are currently underperforming.

So we have only about one to 2% of all of the kids in our district that are underperforming.

So we have only about one to 2% of all of the kids in our district that are underperforming.

All of the others know all of their letter sounds.

They are mastering areas of phonemic awareness.

They can blend and segment CBC words.

They are into decodables.

It is really incredible to see their progress and to see how excited they are that they're readers and they can read this book and they're going to go home and show mom and dad how to read this book and it feels amazing to be able to send those kids to first grade knowing that they are just, they have built such a strong foundation.

So and these, this, that percentage includes kids that have recently moved into our district and also kids with IEPs, so even kids with developmental language disabilities, things like that.

They're all progressing and kind of to talk about what we talked about earlier they look all very similar.

So there's not this huge discrepancy of skills with our kiddos.

They look all very, very similar.

So even the kids who are still in that underperforming range, they're pretty close to where their peers are too.

Are the first grade teachers just ecstatic about this?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

We keep telling them, like, get ready, this is going to be the group to watch, because we really have like nailed it this year with this group Um and yeah it, they're pretty excited about it.

So even this um, our first grade group, now the teachers have said that they've never had a more prepared group Um, but this kindergarten group, moving on, is going to just blow them, blow them away.

So we're really excited for it and I, and what's also interesting is that we have three buildings in our district and all of the kids, regardless of the building that they're in, regardless of the teacher that they have, they're all progressing the same way.

So our buildings, you know, oftentimes can look different in in districts and sometimes they can have more um, you know bilingual students or more, you know a transient population or or whatever, and all of our students, they look so similar.

Yeah, that is just so exciting.

You should, you should be very proud.

We're all so excited and it's been like a such a team effort I mean, the the kindergarten teachers are so great to just be like yeah, take them whenever you want do whatever you want, so they've been.

They've been really helpful along this ride.

So I love that you talked to us about this and you really had this like continuous improvement mindset of like you know, you started something two years ago.

Let's see what works, what doesn't work, we're going to change it for the second year.

And then you even said you know you're going into your third year and you want to make even more changes to this, to really refine it.

So can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Like what have you changed along the way?

And like what are the, what are the things you're even going to refine for this upcoming year?

Yeah.

So along with Julia Linsey work, we really went to working at that phoneme level skill a lot faster than we have before.

So right out the gate in the fall we're going to continue to move right at that phoneme level work for blending and segmenting.

Of course you know they're learning it for the first time as new kindergartners.

So we do a lot of scaffolding with, like I said, visuals and things like that.

So we'll continue to do that.

But we will also incorporate more encoding this year too.

So we did a lot of that, but it was more towards like the second half of the year and I think this fall we'll get going with that right away.

So working really at the phoneme level and encoding, bringing a little bit more of that in like immediately.

We're also going to provide like an intervention gap right in the fall with our new to be first graders.

So we have all the data on them and we know who's kind of in that lower, you know, 25th percentile, and so we'll be able to not form our new kindergarten groups yet but we'll be able to provide probably like a four to five week intervention bump for those first graders coming in who had gotten the intervention last year, but might just need a little bit of that summer slide refresher right.

So we're planning on doing that also, and I know the first grade teachers are really looking forward to that.

That's so exciting.

And just to clarify on the encoding, we're talking about writing here, correct?

Yes, sorry, yep, no, it's okay.

Just clarifying for everybody listening.

Yeah, that handwriting is such an important piece.

So, yeah, we need to get to that, I think a little bit sooner this fall.

Would you be able to walk us through like what that four to five week summer slide refresodable pieces, like the decodable book pieces?

right away and we'll go back to just some general CVC blending and segmenting and then maybe do that for like one to two weeks with some handwriting pieces in there, and then we'll be able to kind of go to all right now let's put this into context, and when we have our book in front of us, like how do we get going on reading this word, um?

And so I'm hoping that by the end of that um, that four to five week, uh, intervention bump, that there'll be kind of back to where they finished in the fall or in the spring of this year.

Got it.

Okay, I love the.

I love that you called it a refresher.

I'm here for that name If you want to trademark it.

I think it's great.

An intervention refresher for first grade intervention refresher yeah, those pieces are important.

I like doing it out of context and then popping it in just like very briefly Right, but then getting right back into context as quickly as possible.

Yep, yep, and we know like it's not going to be a ton of kids.

So we can really focus on those kiddos that are kind of in that lower quadrant in particular, because there's just not a ton of them.

So we can really spend that time that we need in the fall to focus on what their skills are and get them kind of back up and going in the fall to focus on what their skills are and get them kind of back up and going and then say, okay, now just do your tier one thing and then we'll get our new kindergarten group intervention going.

So, yeah, that's.

I think that's what the fall will probably look like.

I love that you've already got it planned.

That's amazing.

All right, Linsey.

So if you could give a piece of advice to a teacher listening who wants to really strengthen their early reading intervention, but they don't know where to begin, what would you say to them?

Collaborate with others, right.

So we're all bringing a wealth of information to our field, but in different ways.

So I can never do some of the things that the classroom teacher does and, um, and, with that being said, I'm bringing in a lot of things that they may not know about either.

So collaboration is really a big thing and you don't have to do it all on your own right.

The classroom teachers, they have so much that they're doing, um, and they're trying to, you know, put out this fire and that fire and all the things, and so taking that collaborative approach with professionals in your building is really really helpful.

So I would kind of start there and then let that data guide your decision making.

So that was one thing we really honed a lot.

This, the last couple of years, is like where what is our data telling us?

And a lot of times we need help with that right.

So we need to rely on people that are kind of experts in the data field, like SLPs or school psychologists, things like that, to kind of really streamline that data collection process, and so that has been another piece that has been that I would kind of recommend to other school educators.

The other thing I would say is like put forth action on it, right?

So a lot of times we talk about early intervention and how important it is, but we really need to look at what the research is telling us and then go with it, do it, you know, put it into action.

There's a lot of times where students will make okay progress in intervention, but maybe it's because we're not really focused on exactly what they need or best practices, and so if we really focus on those pieces, then we can make a ton of movement with kids, can make a ton of movement with kids.

So kind of putting that research, best practices into action is another thing that has been really really important that I would say focus on.

Linsey, I want to talk a little more about that collaboration that you mentioned, especially because you know Lori and I are going to we're going to be speech language pathologists soon.

Of course, no, but seriously I think, oftentimes I feel like you know, the speech language pathologist is doing their thing in the school and our teachers are doing their thing and they're, and you know we end up in these silos of just doing our things.

So I'm wondering, like if you had any advice for teachers who might be thinking like how can I, you know, how can I work with my speech language pathologist more effectively or a speech language pathologist who might have that same interest you did of?

Like you know, I'm interested in early reading.

How can they make that, that collaboration happen?

What advice would you give there?

So that's an interesting one, right, because everyone's pulled in so many different directions that sometimes you don't know what questions to ask or what this person could help you with or what you can learn from.

You know another individual.

So I think really getting to understand, like different people's roles in the schools is really important and what they can bring to the table.

So yeah, I mean speech pathologists.

Like we can provide a whole classroom lessons on what sounds, what like are the features of this sound?

Or maybe kids are struggling and we see this a lot in the fall the concept of first and last what's the first sound, what's the last sound?

And with the last sound they always give you the first sound, right, and so that's a language concept.

That is something that speech pathologists teach day in, day out are those prepositions and spatial terms and all of that kind of stuff.

So we can really help with that.

Where you think maybe they just aren't putting all of the pieces together, but really, when it boils down to what they're not understanding, it really could just be how would what?

How would the speech pathologist kind of teach this Um and whole group is great, um, they can even, you know, do some quick little lessons, um, with small group too.

So, yeah, I I love collaboration with our teachers and and I think the more you do it, the more you learn from it.

And I learned from our classroom teachers all the time on just good general instruction and I think the more you do it, the better you get at it and the more you can kind of like pull those people in when you need them at that particular time.

I'll say every time we talk to someone that has this collaboration between their speech, language pathologist and especially the kindergarten teachers, we see that their data is just like.

The kids are where they need to be.

It's through the roof is how I would describe it.

It's like a hundred percent, you know.

I mean that's the average of this collaboration.

So if you're a primary teacher out there, go grab your speech language pathologist and get chatting.

You know, make a plan now, cause we've got tons of time before the school year starts next year.

Then you're you gave so many practical ideas and how.

You know really what you focused on and I feel like none of it's really like shocking for kindergarten teachers.

You know it's just maybe getting at something faster or incorporating multiple modalities or really effective 15 minute boom intervention and multiple, just structure right, some specific structures.

So, oh my gosh, there's so much to think about after this.

Yeah, but it really has like broad impacts across the school.

So, um, when you think about those MTSS meetings that you have, or child study team meetings, whatever your district calls them, right, we can make such better informed decisions based on the information that we have.

And to say that they've been in you know tier two services for this amount of time and this is their progress, and and really look at like, where did they start and where are they now?

And is that expected progress?

Like do we?

Are they closing the gap?

And that's another thing that we have found with this program is you always talk about the learning gap, the learning gap, but with this early intervention, we are not only closing the learning gap, but we're eliminating it, like it's gone, right.

And so the kids who really need to be discussed at those MTSS meetings are there.

It's very clear, right, it's very clear.

You've got this huge group of kids trending in this direction and then we've got like one or two or very small group of kids who are really not responding to that.

tier two intervention, which is the actual percentage of what the data says should be true, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the decision-making process then becomes so clear.

You know, do we move to a special ed evaluation?

And it's just, it's not about someone's opinion or this or that, it is just totally data-driven and you feel better about that decision because you can rely on that data kind of leading you to where you need to go with the particular child.

Yeah, and it reminds me of you know, this idea of you know, not waiting until they get to third grade.

And then now, all of a sudden, you're like, oh my gosh, we have so many students that need this intervention.

What do we even do?

Because there's so many?

And you really, I want to say I read a book called Upstream.

That was about this, like where you're catching them so early, right that you're catching them right where they need it, before it becomes a bigger problem, that you know, downstream down the road, you're going to have a manageable amount of students who really need that intervention versus you know, you let it go in kindergarten and just like they'll get it in first grade, don't worry, they'll catch up.

And then, all of a sudden, you're like, oh my gosh, we have so many students that need right second, third, fourth, fifth grade, then isn't, is chaos.

I don't know how else to describe it right Really give them what they need, because you have too many students that need a lot.

And too many years and too many skills to.

I mean not just years, but too many years of quote falling behind, too many skills to quote catch up and fill in gaps.

I mean you're just spending all your time backfilling but also then you're not getting the content that they need for that grade and it just continues to gap you know, yep, and classroom teachers have become overwhelmed.

And then intervention it's very overwhelming, yeah, they're full, they can't take any more kids, right.

And then your resource room teachers they're full, their classrooms are full, and it's like, ah, what do we do with this?

And I'm really hoping that we can show that we can reduce those numbers and then the kids who you know are kind of left to really to really require, um, that programming.

You have the capacity to really spend the time that you, that you can or you need to with them.

This is such a proactive versus a reactive approach and I mean that's how MTSS was meant to be right.

Those tiers were meant to be proactive and you know, unfortunately, I think currently sometimes they're used in a reactive.

But I'm so glad to lift this story up of you having this proactive approach for not just your school but several schools right, and you're really able to get in there, see what's needed based on the assessments, and then lift up the students that need that support with a lot of flexibility.

So I mean, you're doing amazing work, Linsey, and we are so grateful that you came on to share.

Is there anything else you want to share before we go?

I will second that we yeah, we often operate under that reactive approach right, and the more that we're doing this and seeing that proactive kind of initiative and getting these kids early, the more we're seeing that, wow, they're really responding to this and it's working.

It's really working.

So we're just really happy with all the results that we're getting and we're excited to keep going with it.

Well, thank you so much for sharing on our podcast today with many people that will be grateful to hear this from you.

We really appreciate your time and all that you're doing for your students.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

It's awesome to kind of share this with everybody.

So, yeah, you can do it, it's not hard, I love it.

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