Word Chaining for Building Phonemic Awareness with Anjanette McNeely

Many of us learned that Phinema awareness instruction should stay oral only. No letters involved. But teachers often wonder, "Is that really helping students become better readers and spellers?" If you've ever felt unsure about how to connect sound work to actual words, you're not alone. Today we're talking about word-chaining, a simple routine that links sounds and letters to support decoding and spelling. Kindergarten teacher, Anjane at McNeely, joins us to explain what it looks like in a real classroom and how it supports orthographic mapping and stronger word reading. Hi teacher friends, I'm Laurie and I'm Alyssa. We are two educators who won the best for all kids and we know you do too. We work 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. Laurie and I can't wait to keep learning with you today. Hi, Anjane at Welcome to the Podcast. Hi, Melissa and Laurie, it's a pleasure to be here. We are so excited to talk to you. I mean, one, a Kindergarten teacher. Always so fun to pick your brain because what a tough job and an exciting job. But also we're going to focus so much on one routine today, which is word teens, which are super powerful. There's so much to talk about with these word teens. I'm excited to hear everything you do and then we'll talk about the research and all of that. But let's just get this out of the way first. If someone's listening and they've never done a word chain, heard of a word chain, they don't even know what we're talking about. How would you describe this activity to those teachers? So I would describe a word chain as a carefully chosen sequence of words that incorporates both encoding and decoding. Word chains provide opportunities for students to really learn the common spellings and notice similarities and differences in words. And that really is going to support a student's orthographic mapping. Good word chains only change one phoneme or sound at a time. And they also are only going to work with one pronunciation of a graphing metatime. So think of like look and food with the 00. We would just focus on one of those graphings at a time so that it wasn't too confusing for a student. So that's kind of a quick summary of what a word chain would be. There was a lot packed in there. So don't worry if you're new to this. We're going to talk about all of those things. But first let's just, can you just give us like an example of maybe one you would do with your kindergartners? What does that actually look like with a word? And what do you say? What do they do? What happens during this? Yeah, I'd love to walk you through it. I have my little metal tray that my students use here. So we have these little metal range covers that you can just like buy on Amazon and tractor supply stores. And we have the magnetic letters that we use. And on our trays, we also have a piece of paper. You can see that like there's a letter on that paper so that as they move the letters back and forth that there's a place for them to know that it goes back to. And the alphabetical order really helps them too as they need to pull them down and put them back. And the bonus is they're also learning alphabetical order. So when we start the year like the tray is only got just a couple of letters. So there's not that cognitive load. And then as we learn the letters, then we add the letters to our tray. And the tray isn't the only way, but that's the way that we're using it. So I'll talk you through how we're using it in class. And in it real quick, I just want all of those letters were the same color. And I know that was done intentionally as well because often those letters come in like this beautiful rainbow assortment. But can you talk about why they're all the same color? So I want my students to focus on the shapes that are in the letters. You know, is there curves? Is there horizontal lines? Because that is the only piece of information that's really going to matter when they go to read a word in our stories. We're not going to have vowels that are in a different color. So I want them to really hone into the shape of the letter. And so that's why they're not different colors. There are letter sets that are different colors. But that's why I chose to keep them the same because I want them to understand what the letters, the letter formation piece is. Yeah, and not thinking about why one, why is this one yellow? Why is this one blue? Or pink or green. Yeah. And it also like when the vowels are a different color, it gives them a little bit of help because they know there's those, you know, five blue letters. And they don't really have to like really look at the letter E. They just kind of that general vicinity. There's going to be the E and I can just pull it down without really thinking about, you know, what what lines make up the E. Yeah, such a good point. And then what would you be so kind is to take pictures of this. So for all of our auditory listeners, which are many, if you could take pictures and we'll add them to the show notes so that everyone can see exactly what you're talking about at this point in time with your tray. Yes, I can do that. So if we're going to start with a word chain, the first thing I do is give them a word. So say the arc word is going to be mapped. So we pound and sound our words. So we would pound the word by I'm having our one palm flat, the other in a pound. And we would say, Matt, and then we use our fingers to count the sounds at. And so now we know there's three. So we're going to be pulling three sounds down at the beginning of the year. There's a lot more scaffolding where I am saying, you know, what letter do we know that spells the sound? Everybody find the M, pull it down, then the next sound, ah, ah, what letter do we know? Let's build the A sound, pull that one down next to it. And we're talking about, you know, we building words from left to right. And then the sound, bring down that it's the T, bring it down. And then we have it in the very bottom of our tray, we have built the word, Matt. So then we want to switch between the encoding and the decoding. So my Q next could be we're going to change Matt to set. So now they have to think, okay, there was three sounds, and she said, at, you know, where in that word did the sound change? And then I've got to put that sound away and then think about, okay, now there was a what letter spells this. So then they bring the, the S down. So that has changed it to an encoding process. So then my next prompt, I usually go back and forth between encoding and decoding. So my next prompt is going to be, okay, now we're going to put the S away and we just say goodbye S. And then I'll say, now we're going to get a new letter and we're going to bring down an F and they'll say, hello, F. So then now they have to, to, you know, distinguish which letters in F, pull it down in the same spot that they just took the letter from. And at that point, we'll put our finger under the first letter in the word and I'll count them down one, two, three and then they'll read the word together. So now we're decoding. So then I'll swap back to encoding and I'll say, okay, now change that word is fat and I'll change it to fit. And so now they have to think again, okay, where did that sound change? Did it change in the beginning, middle or end? And then they say, okay, wait, that one's in the middle. So I'm going to put that letter away and think about fit, you know, it's an I. I've got to find the I and bring it down. And then we just change it back between encoding and decoding and you know, now change the F to an S and then we have sit and then we're going to say, change sit to lit. So we're just going back and forth between encoding and decoding and it doesn't have to be, you know, everything doesn't have to be that exact pattern. You can encode a couple, decode a couple. But there is a benefit to switching back and forth. And then you can even, you know, to end it up, say, okay, now we're going to end it S at the beginning of the word and put your finger under that first letter and then one, two, three, and then we decode it. So we've gone back and forth between encoding and decoding. The reason I like to go back and forth is when you think about the power of interleaving. So we could just practice a bunch of decoding and then a bunch of encoding. And if we're going back and forth that, you know, science of learning, the interleaving practice has, it, you know, it seems counterintuitive to us sometimes. You know, we think we need this big chunk of practice, but it is actually shown that it interleaved practice is more durable and more flexible. So I like that for my students. We do this with so much feedback at the beginning of the year. My tray is under the document camera. They're watching every letter. They're not certain which letters and sounds like I will help them be successful. We pound and sound every word together at the beginning of the year just to really increase that success. And we're really segmenting and blending all of those words while we're doing it. But as they build their knowledge throughout the year, then I pull my teacher voice back and reduce some of that scaffolding. And then I do have 24 students had 26 last year, so that's a lot of little people to be watching for accuracy and to give feedback. I do, I'm fortunate to have an aid in my classroom during this phonics chunk time. So we need to have 12 students that were just quickly scanning to make sure that they have got the letters correct and then giving them the appropriate feedback. Like, okay, look at your middle sound. again. or that maybe because if they do get mixed up and you continue on the chain, it gets really difficult to get caught back up. So we just want to help them with that feedback too. But the routine does speed up and at this time of the year we are just building words so quickly. And at that point I can even add a little bit of maybe vocabulary or context. Like we were building the word shin. The other day is we're learning about the s-h. And I could quickly say, okay everyone, build the word shin. And then hurry and point to your shin. And then okay now change that into a p and then we're on to another word. So that is a quick summary of how we do it in my classroom. Thank you so much for that. It's so helpful to hear you explain and also to think about that. Scaffolding over the course of time. I love to tell you elaborated on that. Now you said that you only changed one thing at a time. And I heard you say that if it was fit to sit, it was that first sound. And if it was, you know, sit. I can't even think of an example. If it was, give me a media old one. Sit to sat. Thank you. And when you're on the spot it's very hard to come up with it. So when you're planning a word chain, how do you decide what kind of changes to build in? You know, how do you think about this? Do you think about doing first sounds first or mixing in those media sounds or the ending sounds, you know, the final sounds? I'd love to hear just your thoughts around how you intentionally plan for these word chanings. So I'm really lucky because the program I use has the word change already embedded in it. But there's some ways to build word chains that can be helpful if you're going to have to build them yourself. So in the program, it includes word change that are at the phoneme level. And they start with just that first sound in the word. And so those are kind of the easiest for kids. So if you have a student who's struggling, just changing that first sound in and out. And you can also use them like at a targeted level where you're focusing on a single sound. So if you've just taught the short "i", you might want to build one where all the words in that chain have the "i" sound in the middle of it. Or I guess even at the beginning because you could start with "i" it and then add an "s" and then sit. But you want to, you know, really have that one prominent skill focused. And then you can also build them with mixed focus so that you might be focusing on the short "u" sound. But you also want to remind the students and kind of review the short "i" that you've worked on. So you might start with something like "sun". So you've got the short "u", go to fun and then go to thin and bin so that you're pulling back in the short "i" and then go back to fun so that you're just continually reviewing those. Yes. So you're creating those opportunities for interleaving within. I love that. So intentional. And it's actually, I feel like, you know, fairly easy to do and get that interleaving practice woven within fair, I mean, I want to say easy but intentionally, right, with intentionality. Yeah, just requires some prior planning. Yes. Yeah. Sorry, I was just thinking that, you know, at the beginning of kindergarten, I'm sure you're a lot more limited because they're just starting to learn all of those, right? So you probably do start with a lot of the same ones over and over again, whereas by the end of kindergarten, I'm sure you have a lot more flexibility to go back and do that interleaving with so many things that they've learned. Yes. Yeah. And I'd love to hear a little bit more internet like, what does this look like in terms of structure? I know you mentioned that you have an aid in your classroom, which is amazing. So you have an extra set of hands to help, but like, how long do you do this for? How often is it daily? You know, and is it whole group? Is it small group? Is it both like, give us the nitty gritty details here? So it is every other day. So it's twice a week that we use it. A whole class, I think that this routine really benefits all students as they're learning phonics skills, most phonics skills. There's a few that don't really fit best with this. For an event like a soft C, soft G, you know, maybe a word sort would fit better or some suffixes, like think about a like a suffix Y at the end of the word. Maybe they would want to focus more on, you know, words that are nouns and changing them to adjectives by adding that Y. So it's not perfect for everything, but it does work for many, many of our phonics skills. So we use it whole class. And then if students are struggling, either with the routine, they just need more practice on like how to pull the letters down and put them back up. We did have to do a lot of explicit instruction at the beginning, beginning of the year about how to use these letters, you know, how to manage them as a tool and not a toy. And so if they're struggling even with the routine or if they're struggling with a sound, then in small groups, then we do more word chaining. So if the small groups pulled back because they're struggling with the short A sound, then I can pull a, another word chain that has the short A sound in it or if they just need practice with multiple different graphene, you know, I can pull a word chain that pulls in as many of those as I can. And just continually review them. And they just more practice really does benefit those students. And it's really efficient because my goal in our whole group is to do at least 10 words in six minutes. So we just, it's really a routine that kind of has a rhythm to it. And if we get into that rhythm, they can build a lot of words quickly, which really, you know, pushes that, the opportunity for them to orthographically map those words. Oh, I love that. Just that boom, boom, boom, time on task. 10 where it's six minutes. Like, go, I love that. How did you think of that time? Is that something you, where you read something? Yes, that's recommended in our in our phonics lessons. That's how much time to get through our phonics lessons in a 30 minute block. So sometimes we do more, sometimes we do less depending, but the goal is to try to even get through 15, but, you know, every day we want to get through 10 of those words. If it's a skill that they've been struggling on a little bit more, then I'll put more, we'll do more words. If it's something that they're really fluent with already, well, might do a few less words and spend more time on something else in the lesson. All right, Ingenette. So, you know, I'm thinking about this right now and the sounds like there's phonemic awareness happening here, right? There, you said segmenting, you said blending, that's phonemic awareness, but, you know, they're using these letters right from in kindergarten. They have those letters right in front of them, which that screams to me, this is phonics. And I mean, I already know that they can do both at the same time, but I want you to talk a little bit about how this word taming really does help with phonics and phonemic awareness. So, one quote that really has helped me understand, you know, phonics and phonemic awareness and where they intersect is something that Dr. Holly Lane, who's the director of the University of Florida Literacy Institute, has said, she said, phonemic awareness is the mental capacity to attend to and manipulate speech sound. Any instruction that promotes the development of that mental capacity is phonemic awareness instruction. If it includes letters, it is also phonics instruction, but it is still phonemic awareness instruction. In fact, it's more effective phonemic awareness instruction. So, one thing about word chaining is that I consider a best bet routine, meaning that as I make my instructional choices, this one is likely to have strong outcomes. It's a best bet because it's an efficient way to get them encoding and decoding and it's integrating the phonics and phonemic awareness. So, that is one of the reasons why word chaining is like an important part of my phonics routine. I love that label of a best bet, best bet routine. I love it. We're stealing it, Laurie. I thought it was just going to say we're stealing it. I think I stole it from Sean Morrissey. So, I have to go. Okay. Well, we love Sean Morrissey. So, we'll give him credit too. It's also a great way to see students who are struggling quickly and easily because as I'm circulating the room, we were just working on building the word thin and I was watching students spell it with an F. So, right then, I know which students having a struggle with that, who am I going to target with additional instruction? So, they're all- >> Angelette, what word was that again? >> Thin. >> Thin. Okay. >> I heard you say fin in my earphones because it was very close. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> So, we were talking THIN versus F-I-N. >> FIN? >> And that's something that students-- >> Yeah, are they hearing that difference? >> Yes. And students struggle with that a lot. And so, you might not understand that in the speech, but you do when you see them building the words. >> Mm-hmm. And then, Angelette, what I'm hearing you say is if you needed to clarify that-- would you-- and not clarify, but extend that, you could provide opportunities to connect to meaning, correct? >> Yes. And then we could practice more TH sounds, make sure that their mouth is in the correct position because the-- are ones that small young students struggle with a lot. >> Yep. And if you were listening, what Angelette did was she just pointed to her mouth and made the THIN sound and then the THIN sound, Don't come over very well on audio. So hopefully you can hear all these. [LAUGHS] And do you use any tools for that? Like sound wall picture cards or mirrors or anything like that to help? Or do you literally just point to your mouth because that's also helpful? Yeah. We do have a sound wall. We use mirrors a little bit at the beginning of the year and can pull them out whenever students need it. But most of the time, if we just point to our mouth and talk about those that are articulate-- I'm not saying that one right. Articulatory gestures? Yes, yeah. Point to your mouth and talk about those gestures. We're putting both our teeth on the tongue or we're putting our cheeks on our lip. As we say, it's good if you really need those tools. But if you're in the moment and you just need to do it, your mouth's right there. So-- Yes. And I find that there's kindergarten students who realize that there are two different sounds. Because they've just been-- the TH sound has been done with the F sound their whole lives. Like they themselves have been making that sound as a substitute for the correct sound. Yes. OK. Yes, which is, according to my speech language pathologist, the TH sound doesn't necessarily get fully in place till maybe H7. But we can continually be working on it because it will start to affect their reading and spelling at this point. That's so fascinating. I know that is the thing that I think is really interesting. I know this is a little sidebar. But when those sounds really form correctly or they anticipate them to form at the time, how does that affect reading development early on? I imagine it's a barrier. Yeah, it can be because they're reading the words incorrectly, which means they're linking them to meaning incorrectly. And they don't understand the difference between those. And then it comes out in their spelling, too. Speaking of those three things that you just mentioned, you mentioned spelling, you mentioned the sound, you mentioned the meaning. And you mentioned orthographic mapping earlier. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that because this might be new to some people too. How does this word taming help with that orthographic mapping? So the orthographic mapping is they're going to be linking the sounds and the phonemes, the graphene, and the meaning together. So think about when they're moving these letters and then thinking about which sound does it make and putting them in an order and then reading the words, all of the key components to orthographic mapping are in there. I think Lenea Ari, when she talks about it, she says orthographic mapping occurs when students decode words, which that's right there in the word taming. When they study the graphing, phoning relationships in the spellings of words, which is exactly what we're doing in word taming. And even when they simply look at spelling and hear it pronounced. So even at the beginning of the year, if they can't blend the word, and I'm still pointing to it and blending the word and they're just hearing it. So all of those things are helping them just activate their knowledge of those graphene and phonemes and connecting it to the pronunciations, which is the conditions that create the orthographic mapping. Yeah, which is why, again, there's this idea out there. I say it all the time, but that phonemic awareness means that you do it without letters. But if you are doing it always without letters, then you're missing that connection. You're missing that chance for the orthographic mapping, which is how students learn to read. All right, so, Angie, I'm thinking about other routines in addition to word chaining. And word chaining is certainly powerful. But there are other routines as well that I want to get into a little bit. So how does word chaining fit alongside routines like dictation or sound boxes? And do you see them as separate activities or are these complementary and multipurpose together? So word chaining can be done with sound boxes. So if you want to build sound boxes and do your chaining within that, we do our dictation at a different point in time in our lesson because I like having the students move the magnets because it takes out one little piece of cognitive load on letter formation, which can be difficult, especially at the beginning of kindergarten. So we're just trying to build words quickly. So we do our dictation later. But you can do word chaining just with a whiteboard and a marker and just write the words, erase the sound or letter that changes and fill it in and fix it. We do that when we're learning words that have two letters, like the word ball. We can't use our letter trace because we only have one letter L. So you could do the handwriting piece and with the word chain. You don't have to use the letters. It just does remove some of that cognitive load. - Yeah, how do you think students struggle or are successful in different ways with either the letter tiles or the maybe writing the using the word chaining in a different way with writing? - I think it's just your purpose of what you want to have happen in that piece of your lesson. And so since the focus is on trying to build as many words to segment and decode as quickly as possible, I like to having the magnets, but then because also our lesson includes dictation later on. So we do write the letters. - I love the opportunity to write. - Yeah, we write words, we write sentences. So I think both can be important parts of your fun, excess and. - Yeah, that's really smart. So just going back to that purpose. - Yep. - And how do you support continuous blending within word chaining and also like you said, perhaps we're using other routine and some we're using maybe sound boxes to support word chaining? How do you support continuous blending as you're using these various routines? - So connected phonation or continuous blending like was researched by Gonzales and Ari and it was published in 2021. It's a really interesting study because they assigned some kids this connected phonation so that when you are making the sound, you are connecting them. So it's, man, you're hooking those sounds together. Then they put some other students in a group where it was segmented phonation. So it's with a break between each and then they have to recode it, man. And so they taught the two groups and with continuous sounds, which are easier to push together. But then they assessed them with both continuous and stop sounds and found that the students who had the connected phonation actually could read both types better than the students that had the segmented. So it even went over into the stop sounds. So they found that when you use the segmented phonation that students are having to try to delete a schwa and they also would forget a sound in the word and it would usually be an initial sound. So I have just really, I call it gently insisting that my students push the sounds together. We, I don't expect them to do independently at the beginning of the year. Some of them are more independent now. But so I will just model a model model model. Sometimes as teachers, I think we underestimate how much modeling and practice we need. And I just insist that we connect those sounds together. And then they get pretty good at like, you know, the VC word or the CDC word, then we'll throw another sound in and then model model model again. We even have a stuffed dragon that sits up on a shelf watching over our classroom. It's called the decoding dragon. It's based on some work of limestone. And so the dragon is always watching to see if you are not guessing number one and if you are pushing those sounds together all the way through to the end of the word. And one of the biggest benefits that I've seen in my classroom is that the nonsense word fluency whole word red scores go up because they can blend through those words more efficiently than if they kind of move into the habit of, you know, saying each sound and then trying to recode it. And also all kindergarten and probably first grade teachers know the pain of a student who, you know, sounds out in app and then they look up at you and go pat. And you're like that. How did you get to pat, you know, from app? And so when they're continuously blending, it helps them hold on to all the sounds. So they're more likely to come up with that same sound. So when we're starting the year, it's still, we still recode the word so it's map, map. So we still say the word after, but you're just pushing those sounds together. Yeah, it does reduce that cognitive load, right? Students don't have to hold all of those sounds separately. They're blended together. I'm thinking of a word like, "Mat" used in the beginning. If I was continuous blending, "Mat" and then students are going to say, "Mat," right? But what you had said is that often students, if without the continuous blending, they delete that first sound, right? So if they're, "Mat," they're likely what you're saying. They're going to say, "at," and just look at you and smile, right? "At." They actually, in my, this is only my personal experience. We'll hold onto that last sound and then guess a word that starts with it. You know, so with the end sound, I mean, it could come out. Because that's all the remember, especially if a student is struggling with working memory. But if you're connecting it, and even when you're using the stop sounds, if you use the body Coda blending, so that you're pushing through those first two sounds, like so tap, you would push through tap, and then add the P, so that they're pushing through all the sounds and connecting as much as you can, and not leaving gaps whenever you can. And can you explain that just a little bit more for people that might not understand there? Because I had little trouble with that at first too. I was like, "Yeah, but how do you do that if the, like, I can't hold that, I can't hold it out of the locker." Right, and you don't want them to think it, the sound says, "Tot." Right? Like, I'm trying to do it emphatically for a podcast. So, you know, we don't want T to say, "Tot." So what do we do? So, when you talk, when you say body Coda, so body is everything up to and including the valve, and the Coda is the final consonant or consonants. So, if you're thinking tap, instead of saying, "T, app," you're going to push the, the, and the add together quickly, so it's "ta," and then, "P," so that you're, you're reducing the chance that that schwa is going to get in there. Right. Right. So, because you can't hold out that first sound, that's where I got stuck, and you just go right to that second sound where you can. Yeah, right. Okay. And just model, and model, model that for a student. And continuous blending, such a small little shift with such big, big impact. Yeah. And definitely another best bet. So, I'm assuming, um, Anjane, that this wasn't always what you did, um, that perhaps you've had a shift throughout the years. Um, so what did Phenemic Awareness look like in your classroom, maybe before this, and what made you change course? So, in the past, I had used games from the Florida Center for Reading Research, and so we would use the Phenemic Awareness, you know, oral-only games, and then about mid-year as they had learned some letters, um, then we would kind of start incorporating them as a combined phonics and Phenemic Awareness instruction. Um, then I was introduced to this idea that, you know, Phenemic Awareness instruction could be done in the dark. So I started making sure that I kept including the oral-only as I was teaching the other, um, skills even through, to the end of the year. Then my district bought an oral-only program that we used for 10 to 15 minutes a day. At that time, I was teaching half-day kindergarten. So the students weren't even at school for three hours a day. So every minute of instruction was like golden time, and I was working at some highly impacted poverty schools. So students needed to accelerate their learning. And as more discussion came out about, um, if oral-only was the best approach for students, I was listening to some different researchers, different ideas, and I thought, you know, what, what do I lose if I pull this out? And I'm starting to doubt how much of the students really need, and they do need to get it attached to print. So I checked my data, and I decided to pull it out, and then progress monitor and see what happened. And as I pulled it out, nothing dipped in my data, you know, not even the Phenemic Awareness skills that we were assessing for in kindergarten. So then I knew that that wasn't having the kind of impact I needed to have for my students. And I could use something like word-chaining, or at that point in time, I was using a lot of phoneme-grafting mapping as well, because I was using a different, um, phonics program that wasn't as robust as the one I have now. But I didn't see this drop in my scores, and what I also was really wanting to integrate, and that short amount of time is, um, really, um, solid handwriting instruction, which research supports more vocabulary instruction, which research also supports. I mean, you know, trying to squeeze in maybe some syntax. So for me, it, even though it was a small piece of time, it was a fun routine. Um, the kids seemed to enjoy it. We spent way too much time in those bigger phonological awareness chunks that, you know, at one point in time, we thought kind of maybe that was the continuum, but with more research, now we're, it's not that we don't ever work on rhymes in my classroom. We do pound and sound, so they're discovering syllables, especially during our writing. But I just don't focus on like 15 different skills, um, in a oral-only routine anymore. Yeah, and you have me thinking, because Lurid, I just talked about this. I think it was just yesterday where we said, you know, so often teachers are hearing like, "Oh, you know, this really great thing, like word-chaining, or a fluency routine," or "You can do them just 10, 15 minutes a day." And it's like, but every teacher we talk to, the first thing they say is like, "I don't have time for everything. Where do I fit this all in?" It's like, time is so precious. You gave a really extreme example with a half day, but even teachers with a full day are looking for that time. So, you know, for those who are maybe in favor of an oral-only time, like often say, "Not only 10, 15 minutes. It's not that long." But what I hear you saying, correct me if I'm wrong, is like, if you can trade out that 10, 15 minutes for something that is not only teaching the same skills, but in a more efficient and more effective way, then why would we not? Did that sum it up for you? It did, and you just think about the reading rope, and as my understanding and knowledge has grown, the reading rope is weaving together. And so sometimes it's super convenient to think, I'm going to have these stand-alone times to teach all these things, but we also have to be thinking about how it is weaving together. Yeah, and also just to kind of like stamp the time thing, right? 10 to 15 minutes of oral-only, phonemic awareness, verse without what you saw, which was much progress, verses what you said earlier. You said, "You mentioned the idea of efficiency, right? You were like, I have to be really efficient." 10 to 15 words in six minutes. I wrote that down. 10. If we could swap, it's a third of the time. That's incredible, right? When we really think about efficiency, if we're really looking for that big hitter, the best bet routine, six minutes. And you're doing phonics and phonemic awareness in that time. It's a two-fer. I was trying to think of a good word for it. A two-fer is good. Getting your bang for your buck there, you are getting it. All right. And today, I want to ask you a question that we did not talk about. If you don't have the answer for this, you just tell us. But you're a kindergarten teacher. And my son's in first grade. I can imagine this is really, really, really helpful for those grades. I'm wondering if you know, does it help after? I mean, maybe in second grade, I am sure a little bit too, but does it help for second grade and above as well? Maybe even for students who might be missing some of these skills when they get to those older grade levels? Yeah, I think it's whenever you're wanting to master the phonic skills. So any of those phonic skills that are going to fit well into a word-chaining, think, because like we talked about earlier, there's some that might work better with a word sort or-- but yes, I would agree that a K-through to the word-chaining is a really powerful routine. And anyone who has not mastered some phonic skills, I've done some tutoring for older, struggling readers, and we do word-chaining in that as well, just to build that powerful practice to set them up for that orthographic mapping. Yeah, would you do it with multisolabic words, or does that get too lengthy? I wouldn't do it with multisolabic words. I think there's probably better routines because you're breaking up each syllable and then blending the syllables together. Yeah, I mean, there's so many schwas, I can't even imagine getting into that, change this, change that. Oh, the chaos. All right, so as we come to a close here, if you had one quick tip for teachers who are like, "I want to try this tomorrow or I want to make a change to my word-chain routine," what is like some of the things you learned as you started implementing this that you would make sure teachers know to make it successful? So I would start with some good explicit instruction on how you want your routine to go with the students, especially if you're going to give them magnet letters. You would want them to kind of understand how you would want them to handle and move all of those things. That's an important piece that if we skip over the word-chaining, routine can kind of get confusing and frustrating, so I wouldn't want somebody to not try it just because of that to be explicit with your students about how it works, where the letters go, how you want them to close the letters down. And then just find or create one list of words and script out how you're going to switch back and forth thinking about your encoding and your decoding and then just try it. And before I had magnet boards, I just had strips of paper that were boxes and I'd have the students write each of the letters we needed for that word-chaining and then we literally just tear them because there wasn't time to cut them and then put them out in front of us and then build those words back and forth with encoding and decoding. And it wasn't the most efficient because we could never find the letters because they They weren't in alphabetical order, but it worked and we did it. So I would just say give it a try and see what you like that works well. If you need to see a model, there is a great video on the UFLY YouTube site where they model the, we're changing with the encoding and the decoding. And while you're working on that routine, just challenge yourself to try the connected phonation if it's not something that you have already done, it is just a little change that can have a big impact on your students. So model that connected phonation and keep modeling it until they start to be able to do that independently on their own. That's great. And that video that you mentioned will put in our show notes. So everyone knows it's there. And also, I hope you don't mind. We were also planning to link the video of you in your classroom doing word change so that people could see it as well because it is really a lovely modeling of this routine. Is that okay? Yes. And my students love the word chaining. It's really fun. Like that we're only fully mcawaring sometimes people think that routine is really fun, but word chaining can be really fun too. Well, we are so glad that you came on to talk to us all about this very specific routine. And we can't wait to hear from all the teachers out there who are trying it and just hearing about how word chaining is changing their instruction in their classroom. So thank you so much for sharing your expertise and knowledge, Angie. No, thank you so much for having me. My journey has always been one little more piece of information from someone else, someone else, you know, some other teachers, some other researchers. So I'm happy to share anything that I can to help anyone else on their journey. To stay connected with us, sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com. Join our Facebook group and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share with a teacher friend or leave us a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts. Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests of the Melissa and Lori Love Literacy podcast are not necessarily the opinions of Great Minds BBC or its employees. We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to learn with us.