Teaching Reading with Dr. Marnie Ginsberg of Reading Simplified — Episode 186
Teaching reading is an important skill that parents can be integral with. I am excited to share the information from Reading Simplified!
Today’s guest is Dr. Marnie Ginsberg. She is the founder of Reading Simplified, whose mission is to support busy, overwhelmed teachers & parents learn a research-based system of effective and efficient instruction that accelerates all students’ reading achievement. Marnie’s surprise at finding so many of the middle school students in her classroom reading well below their grade, spurred a passion for finding and disseminating solutions. What followed included private tutoring, university research, the creation of an evidence-based reading program, and ultimately the development of Reading Simplified.
ReadingSimplified.com
Facebook.com/Readingsimplified
Twitter.com/readsimplified
Instagram.com/readingsimplified
youtube.com/thereadingcoach
This episode was inspired by my posts on teaching reading.
Big thanks to our sponsor Family Routines — because if you want to get into a routine, and have your family help out more it’s the course for you!
In this episode
How schools teach our kids to read (and if it’s the best option for our kids)
How to use the library to help our kids read.
What to do if they’re not interested.
Other things that might interest you
Producer: Drew Erickson
Check out my other parenting podcasts:
Transcript
[00:00:00.000] – Hilary Erickson
Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Today on Episode 186, we are talking about reading. Let’s untangle it.
[00:00:18.170] – Hilary Erickson
Hi, I’m Hilary Erickson, the curly head behind the Pulling Curls Podcast: pregnancy and parenting untangled. There’s no right answer for every family, but on this show, we hope to give you some ideas to make life simpler at your house. Life’s tangled just like my hair.
[00:00:39.000] – Hilary Erickson
Today’s guest is the head behind Reading Simplified. She was a teacher in middle school and realized that her kids in her classroom were just not reading, and so she has come up with a movement of her own. She has so many good tips for reading. I want to introduce today’s guest, Marnie Ginsberg.
[00:01:01.260] – Hilary Erickson
Are you overwhelmed by all there is to do around your house? As a new mom, I felt overwhelmed at every turn. Fortunately, I turned to systems to make a change. Whether it’s mornings, dinnertime, or even just to climb out of a pile of kids clothes. My course, Family routines, can save you. I hold your hand as we smooth out these rough patches, making every day easier so we can more easily handle when your preschooler tells you they can use their urine like a lightsaber. Parenting is always going to be a wild ride. Routines are just your seat belt and they can support you. Use coupon code UNTANGLED to save 15 % of checkout. Link in the show notes.
[00:01:37.820] – Hilary Erickson
Hey, Marnie, welcome to the Pulling Curls Podcast.
[00:01:40.240] – Marnie Ginsberg
I’m so excited to be here, Hilary. Thank you.
[00:01:42.810] – Hilary Erickson
Now, this is a topic I am super passionate about. I love teaching my kids reading because I’m weird like that. I always thought one of them would not be into it, but all of my kids, all three, just loved all that early reading stuff. So my big question for you, because I read a lot online, is that it doesn’t actually end up helping them long term. But I feel like it does because my kids have been really good academically as well. What do you think or what did the study show?
[00:02:12.500] – Marnie Ginsberg
That early reading? Yeah. There is mixed research on it, and I think that’s because the child development is just so variable, multi variable. But we do have a very well known study that has been widely cited from the 80s about the Matthew effects. And this leading researcher adopted this idea of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, that the rich get richer.
[00:02:36.120] – Marnie Ginsberg
And that’s how, and since then, other research studies have validated that, that when you get off to a good start learning how to crack the code, then you read more and you like it because you’re confident. And then you read more, then you learn how to recognize words better, and then you even get a better vocabulary.
[00:02:58.860] – Marnie Ginsberg
And so this is just a positive snowball that does indeed start very early. In fact, we know that those kids that in his study, this Matthew effects paper, those kids that got to the end of first grade that had already figured out the foundational skills, they were going to have high achievement in school. It was pretty not a one to one relationship, but a very strong correlation. And we also have contrary studies showing that if kids do not read by the end of first grade, well, it’s highly likely, in fact, nine out of 10 times, they won’t read well in fourth grade and maybe beyond.
[00:03:34.940] – Marnie Ginsberg
And those are devastating scenarios for children. Your self identity, self concept, your motivation for school, you cannot learn as well from all the other areas of school because reading is the backbone of all academic learning.
[00:03:51.220] – Marnie Ginsberg
And so we see high correlations between those on welfare and low literacy rates, those in the prison system with low literacy. So getting off to an early good start is such a protective factor for a child. And unfortunately, in the US and in most English speaking countries, we’ve been led astray in how we’re supposed to teach reading. Most teachers have been given misinformation about how kids learn to read, and so a lot of children struggle unnecessarily in those early days.
[00:04:28.740] – Marnie Ginsberg
I recommend a podcast that just came out. It’s just six episodes by an award winning journalist. And the podcast is called Sold a Story. And it talks about how teachers and publishers and even university teacher prep have misled people in what we know about how the brain learns to read. And so as a result, a lot of kids struggle early on. So your audience of parents needs to be aware of the challenges. Of course, there’s certainly bright lights in places, but there are challenges that many kids face in school because many teachers have tools that are highly ineffective.
[00:05:06.500] – Marnie Ginsberg
And in fact, over 65% of US fourth graders are not proficient in reading.
[00:05:12.390] – Hilary Erickson
Oh, man. And I bet that’s gone down since COVID.
[00:05:16.820] – Marnie Ginsberg
Well, yeah, the number of lacking proficiency has gone up. It just came out last month and the data was not good across the board for the most part.
[00:05:25.670] – Hilary Erickson
I mean, a few thoughts just on what you said so far. I think reading, obviously, I think it’s best taught one on one. It makes it so hard in the classroom. So I’ve done a lot of reading intervention at school just as a PTA mom and agree seeing those kids that are just struggling so hard. I’ve seen them go through all the grades now that I have kids that have graduated high school and you do see them struggle.
[00:05:49.110] – Hilary Erickson
But in general, those are the kids that are struggling in all areas. They’re also struggling in math, not always the case. Sometimes your brain just works in a specific way. So that’s hard. But also socioeconomic status. know, like, if mom, dad are never home because they’re just trying to put food on the table, that makes it really hard for kids to learn. So there’s a lot of factors on all these studies.
[00:06:09.080] – Marnie Ginsberg
That’s true. Researchers have shown that as few as 2% to 5% of kids should actually struggle if they’re given high quality research based interventions, at least in terms of recognizing those words. Then we have another level of skill that needs to develop over a lifetime, which is just learning the background knowledge. So you can be a good reader because being a good reader is highly associated with knowing a lot of stuff. So I can pick up this article from the New York Times about something in physics, and I don’t know much about physics, but I know enough to be able to comprehend it.
[00:06:41.120] – Marnie Ginsberg
But if I haven’t had that background knowledge, I’m at a disadvantage. So that is a lifelong thing. And it can be often, although not, of course, universally, that those who are in communities or families in poverty that they have less access to acquiring that background knowledge. So it’s, again, really important for the school to take on these issues of let’s get the kids cracking the code and then let’s fill up their minds with lots of knowledge about the world systematically.
[00:07:08.700] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah. Well, hopefully colleges are going to start teaching teachers or there’s going to be training to hopefully adjust it. But my listeners tend to not be teachers.
[00:07:17.450] – Marnie Ginsberg
Well, maybe some are. No, I know, but I just want folks to know about it because a lot of folks assume that the schools can take care of their child with reading. And certainly that works many many times, but it’s not working for a majority of our students right now. So we have to get involved.
[00:07:35.820] – Hilary Erickson
I will say I never relied on our teachers to teach my kids reading because they were reading before they went to school. And so I was like, if you could fix them in other areas, it’d be awesome.
[00:07:45.980] – Marnie Ginsberg
Yeah, I know that feeling.
[00:07:48.480] – Hilary Erickson
Okay, so what can parents be doing to support kids? Well, first off, what age do you recommend starting these activities with your kids?
[00:07:57.360] – Marnie Ginsberg
That also is widely variable in the research because learning to read is really a cultural accomplishment. So it has to do with what the family chooses, what the community, what the nation emphasizes.
[00:08:09.200] – Marnie Ginsberg
There are some countries that don’t start reading instruction until seven, and that’s like, it’s verbatant to do it before then. But Montessori schools have been doing beginning reading instruction for over 100 years around age 3. And I actually like, especially for the preschool age, to adopt Maria Montessori’s mantra, which is follow the child.
[00:08:33.000] – Marnie Ginsberg
So some children are really not very interested at two or 3 and sometimes even 4 in learning the letter sounds or sitting down to read a book. And so as a parent, we have to adjust to what they’re interested in because, yes, we want to provide them the skills, but we also want them to have a positive perspective on reading and a positive emotional bond with us as they think about reading.
[00:08:56.610] – Marnie Ginsberg
So we want to balance the two ends. It’s a tension because it can be challenging to get started with reading. So I personally, I would think that when the child was four, it would be wise to ensure that they’re learning their letter sounds and they’re getting beginning into the alphabetic principle, which is this concept that our written language is a code for sound.
[00:09:20.020] – Marnie Ginsberg
One easy way to do that is as you’re sitting with them and reading any book that they really enjoy, draw your finger along the print and make sure that each time you tap a word, you’re speaking that word, and then occasionally show them the alphabetic principle implicitly by dragging out the sounds in the word. So the mom sat down on the sofa, and so you’re just hinting it.
[00:09:45.740] – Marnie Ginsberg
Hey, those sounds that are coming out of my mouth, those relate to those squiggles on the page. That is the first insight to help with the alphabetic principle. And then occasionally, maybe even ask them, The mom sat on the… What’s that first sound while you’re pointing at it, and maybe they can come up with S, and so you’re easing them into it.
[00:10:05.380] – Marnie Ginsberg
And so that when kids come to kindergarten, if they know their letter sounds and they can hear some sounds and words, this is a very important early skill that’s called phonemic awareness, that perception of just what I gave an example of, can you break off the S at the beginning of sofa? That doesn’t come naturally, and it’s really an accomplishment that comes through reading instruction.
[00:10:28.560] – Marnie Ginsberg
So letter sounds and that early phonemic awareness is so important for preparing kids to be ready for kindergarten. And I think there’s certainly no harm in making sure that your kids are reading by kindergarten. That would be an enrichment and accelerated option. But many, many kids are perfectly capable of that. And if they resist, then give it a month. If they are two, three or four and pick it up again, or do it in five minute bursts, make it a game. And then over time, they will be more than well prepared for kindergarten.
[00:11:01.270] – Hilary Erickson
I wanted to speak to like… Because with my first kid, I was like, I don’t know what to do with them. So I just did things that were fun. Now, one of the things that I think is underutilized by a lot of parents is the library because it is so free.
[00:11:16.320] – Marnie Ginsberg
And so fun.
[00:11:17.760] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah. I mean, besides the whole lost library book phenomenon, which is an opportunity cost of going to the library. That’s another podcast. Right. But that’s also teaching your kids responsibility. We have a special spot where library books go. So that’s a lesson. But just taking kids to the library, there is always something at the library that little kids are interested in. Older teens, less so.
[00:11:40.860] – Marnie Ginsberg
Right. Yeah. They may have puppet shows. They’ll have the read aloud just looking at the books. Yeah. If anything that we can do as parents to help the child identify as a reader is huge.
[00:11:52.900] – Marnie Ginsberg
When COVID hit, my daughter wanted to buy some books at Barnes & noble. I tell you what, I went every time she asked. I could have bought those books at the library. I could have checked them out the library, but it was like, well, first of all, the libraries were closed, so it was like an outing. I wanted to nurture this is a relationship.
[00:12:11.580] – Marnie Ginsberg
Mom and daughter are going to have a good time and we’re going to go pick what you want within reason. And it was really beneficial. And she actually started reading again after a little slump that happened when a teacher told her she had to read only up to her ability level. She was like third or fourth grade and she wasn’t really interested in middle school novels, even though she was capable. And that was a bit bummer. So this revived it, and she’s been reading ever since. The point is, yeah, the libraries, even though I mentioned going to the bookstore, the libraries are priceless, as you say. And again, follow the child. What are they interested in? Yeah, sometimes at the time we want them to be exposed to great literature.
[00:12:51.900] – Marnie Ginsberg
But if they want to read these silly books in a series that you’re tired of, just try to strengthen yourself and keep doing it because if they’re enjoying it, you’re on the right track.
[00:13:01.280] – Hilary Erickson
Good old Captain Underpants.
[00:13:03.720] – Marnie Ginsberg
Exactly.
[00:13:05.310] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah. And I think a lot of times the non-fiction section is underutilized by moms of little kids because you don’t have to read every word that’s on that page about spiders. But if your kid loves spiders, then get the book, look at the pictures, just talk about it. I think, and I remind you that it is so free.
[00:13:23.100] – Hilary Erickson
I think a lot of parents are like, well, books are expensive. I don’t want to buy a ton on Amazon. And I’m like, don’t buy any, buy some books. You obviously want books at your house. When they’re little because they eat the books, you need to have your own books. But it’s so much easier to organize books that aren’t yours that just go back to the library. So a huge fan of that.
[00:13:40.580] – Marnie Ginsberg
Yeah. I was just going to say, many of us tend to be a fiction reader or a non fiction reader, and then whatever our default is, then we unintentionally pass that on to the child by just not exposing them. So yeah, be more than willing to branch out into other genres and particularly non-fiction, because again, that’s where the kids are going to get the most knowledge of the world, which will help them succeed in so many areas of life and become a better reader.
[00:14:03.260] – Hilary Erickson
I had largely ignored non-fiction books until I had a kid at school when one of the teachers was like, How often do you go into the non-fiction section? I was like, What?
[00:14:11.660] – Marnie Ginsberg
I’m so sorry. Where is that?
[00:14:13.520] – Hilary Erickson
I’ve just been focusing on the Thomas the Tank Engine books. And the other thing was we just made it so much fun at our house. It was just part of our day. We had a letter puzzle, we would hide the letters around the house, and then we would make the sounds. There are a lot of really fun activities that you can do.
[00:14:29.350] – Hilary Erickson
There was never a point in time where I was pushing my kids into reading, but we extended that into we would be in the car and I would be like, cat. And it would be a guessing game of what is that word that mom just sounded out because my first one had a really hard time sounding out letters. And so there are going to be bumps in the road. I just want to say as you’re teaching your kids to read, that’s totally normal. And every kid is really different, I find amongst my three. They each struggled with something different.
[00:14:56.730] – Marnie Ginsberg
Yeah. I love how you were doing that, that phonemic awareness preparation, basically, and also revealing the alphabetic principle, maybe drawing those sounds out cat or what word am I saying? And that’s going to help them with blending, which is the first step in their decoding process.
[00:15:13.470] – Hilary Erickson
These are fun things that you can do in the car. I think the problem is a lot of times moms just don’t know these fun things that you can easily incorporate into your day. We had tons of sticker books. I’m totally the sticker book mom. There’s a lot of letter sticker books out there that you could just while you’re putting the sticker on, you go Ah Ah Ah Ah, and I was like, Well, I’m not a professional. Maybe I’m doing this wrong. That’s what I would think as a mom. It turns out you can’t really do it all that wrong, I guess.
[00:15:43.880] – Marnie Ginsberg
Most kids are going to pick it up fairly easy when they have that type of enrichment. But a lot of children also still struggle. They may have some learning difficulties. They may even have dyslexia, and so they may need more intense help. And also that might show up as, I don’t want to do this. That alone for sure is not a single warning factor.
[00:16:06.150] – Marnie Ginsberg
But if they’re not interested, you might, again, need to be more creative, get some help. But I love what you’re saying. I mean, if you can’t think of a game, what can you hide? How many different ways can you hide something where they have to go seeking outside, inside that, you can hide a letter or you can hide words, you can hide sentences. And like a scavenger hunt, you find the first thing and then that will tell you where to go to get the next thing. And each time, of course, they have to read the sentence.
[00:16:34.720] – Marnie Ginsberg
I’ve seen a really fun video of a parent taping words on the wall and a kid shooting them with a nerf gun.
[00:16:42.340] – Hilary Erickson
That’s awesome.
[00:16:43.200] – Marnie Ginsberg
Which is take whatever your kids enjoy and put a word or a letter sound in front of him.
[00:16:47.520] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah. Two of the other activities my kids really like, there’s the bread tags that close your bread. It’s a plastic tag. Anyway, they all fit together. I read this in some books, so you could write, and again, we were poor, so you could write the letters on the bread tags, and then they could try and fit them together, like a word puzzle. But again, the poor man’s word puzzle. So that was a fun way to do it. And they can put together sounds that don’t really go together, right? Right.
[00:17:15.390] – Marnie Ginsberg
Yeah. Practicing and then they can make, is this a real word or not? And that’s the game. You could use pebbles or stones, too, for writing with a Sharpie. Yeah.
[00:17:25.660] – Hilary Erickson
And we used to, I would give my kids a high lighter, which was generally a mom tool, and they could go with a piece of newspaper and highlight all the A’s.
[00:17:34.370] – Marnie Ginsberg
Fun.
[00:17:34.760] – Hilary Erickson
So there really are, I think a lot of times we think of it as drudgery because it is. When you do reading intervention at the school, it is a little bit drudgery.
[00:17:43.030] – Marnie Ginsberg
Especially if they didn’t, because back to the earlier question, they didn’t get off to a good start. There’s that lack of motivation, the sense of failure, and it happens quickly. Even in kindergarten, kids start to recognize, Wait a minute, I’m not picking this thing up as much as easily as everybody else. They all know that reading is the main activity at school and they’re desperate to do it.
[00:18:04.390] – Marnie Ginsberg
So yeah, that’s why I… Even though there’s mixed opinions in the reading world about starting early, if you can, again, follow the child, I think you’re so much better off that way to give them a good start so that they have positive emotions about it and they have at least solid skills entering kindergarten.
[00:18:24.020] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah. And I’ve seen so many kids pick it up so well in kindergarten and first grade just with seeing the other kids, there’s a good amount of pressure at school. So don’t feel like all is lost if your kid is entering kindergarten or first grade because it’s such a magical time, too, when your kids suddenly pick up reading. It is a whole new world when all of a sudden they’re like, That sign says stop. And you’re like, yes, that’s why I’m stopping.
[00:18:50.360] – Marnie Ginsberg
Well, maybe I could just give a little framework for your listeners because I think most people have got the idea, well, you’re just going to teach the alphabet. Okay. Yes. And I actually prefer to teach the letter sounds at least first primary because that is what helps you decode a word. If you look at the word CAT and you say the letter sounds, CAT does not sound anything like the actual word itself cat. Hearing, knowing that the letter C is if you do that first, it will help lay the groundwork for the first step of cracking the code and decoding.
[00:19:24.540] – Marnie Ginsberg
It also helps with the secondary thing that I really emphasized earlier, the alphabetic principle, do they get that those little squiggles are codes for sound? Letter, sound, knowledge, the alphabetic principle, and then the third one, the phonemic awareness, the perception of those sounds and words, can they break apart the word sit into s-i-t? And can they put it back together when they hear the sound separately? If you build those three skills into your toddler and preschool experience, along with reading and enjoying books, they will be set.
[00:19:57.880] – Hilary Erickson
I’ve talked to a couple of occupational therapists for Zero to Three lately on the podcast, and it’s just like when you start to feel insane as a mom because you’re like, here we go, we’re going to go do the laundry. What do you think is in the laundry today? What colors are we going to find? And you’re like, I am romper room. I would look at myself and just be like, I need a new life because you’re just constantly talking, you’re constantly trying to build up these skills. And it’s just a constant effort, I think. And if you can build letters and letter sounds into it, it can really be fun. And again, when your kids learn how to read, it is pure magic.
[00:20:32.900] – Marnie Ginsberg
It’s fun to watch.
[00:20:35.600] – Marnie Ginsberg
Big props to the moms out there teaching kids to read. And you can’t expect the school to just do it because it is a one on one principle. And obviously our teachers, 20 kids in a kindergarten class.
[00:20:46.330] – Marnie Ginsberg
It’s too hard. Back to the Montessori idea. My kids went through that and I think just the format of it is genius because a typical classroom is ages 3 to 6 or 3 to 5, not sure. So that means that in any given year, about a third of the class is learning to read. So the teacher can sit with those children and give them more intensive feedback, which is one of the most important things we can do. Once our students get started with cracking the code, then the best thing that they can do is practice with us supporting them with a lot of encouragement and also specific tips.
[00:21:21.550] – Marnie Ginsberg
So if they read the word cat as cat, you’d say you just tap the A and say, yes, it could be. But in this word, what else could it be? So you give them a little cue, but make them do the work unless they’re super frustrated. And that’s the feedback that not only helps them with the word cat, but then that’s a generative thing that will help them with so many other words and so many other phonics patterns. And so, yeah, getting whether it’s one on one with a mom or dad or a caregiver or in a small group at school, that’s the highest leverage activity we have at our disposal to help them become a good reader.
[00:22:01.500] – Marnie Ginsberg
And sadly, it doesn’t happen as much as it probably should, both at school and sometimes at home. I think we probably should say related to this whole topic that the screens are the enemy to becoming a good reader. It’s a totally different world than when we grew up. The books were the most exciting thing. I’m old enough, sometimes there was literally nothing on TV. We don’t have that situation anymore.
[00:22:27.070] – Marnie Ginsberg
So if parents can put pretty firm boundaries on how much time kids have with a device so that they don’t expect the world to come at them in three second intervals nonstop, then they will have the attention span to cope with a longer story or to cope with the hard work of sounding things out because at first it can be hard work.
[00:22:50.420] – Marnie Ginsberg
If the kids are prepared well, they don’t necessarily feel like it’s that hard work because they’re so excited, they know they’re off to the races. But if they have anything that’s gotten in the way and then like you said, with intervention, it becomes quite a struggle. And so you need to adjust and play games and do things to make it fun and inspiring.
[00:23:08.560] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah. The good thing about screens is though there are some fun apps where they teach letter sounds. So you can because we’re all going to have screen time on. I hear you.
[00:23:18.540] – Hilary Erickson
The electric company taught me to read.
[00:23:21.210] – Marnie Ginsberg
Probably, right? Cool. Yeah. I have a collection on my YouTube channel of the different electric company in between the Lions and SeSAMe Street videos that I’ve cultivated to. If you’re going to teach the O sound, you could go and watch these videos. So yeah, definitely use technology wisely. The app Grapho game has been researched many times and has been demonstrated to be a pretty easy way for kids to learn the letter sounds. And another one that I really like relates to a game that I teach that I play called Switch It. But the app that is similar to this game, which helps with cracking the code, is called What’s Changed. And so kids are exposed to maybe cat again. I’m really beating this cat down. Let’s change cat to sat and then change sat to sit and then change sit to pit and pit to pot. So maybe even getting over to changing that last letter, pot to pot. So that comparison of single changes really zeroes in the child’s mind to notice both the phonemic awareness and the letter sound knowledge. And that contrasting activity really accelerates kids reading really quite rapidly. So we do it with apps, but we also play it with just little letter sound cards on a board with lines at the bottom.
[00:24:37.490] – Marnie Ginsberg
So they’re dragging the correct letter sound card onto the right line in the position of the word. And you don’t need anything fancy. Just cut up a little index card and put one sound on each card. So the SH in show would be on one card because it’s one sound, which just relates to how our code works. It’s a code.
[00:24:58.650] – Hilary Erickson
For sounds. Yeah, there’s so many fun ways. And I think the importance is to make it fun. Find what’s fun for your kids. So even if the only thing that’s fun is going to the library and finding books about football or trucks, then do that. Because those are all the baby steps that everyone else is using. I think a lot of parents feel like they’re behind, but doing the fun things will eventually bring good stuff. Yeah.
[00:25:22.980] – Marnie Ginsberg
And if you’re feeling behind, like, I can’t read aloud today, pull out an audiobook book, which could be something free that you access on the internet. It could be easily accessible things from the library. And that is a great way to get the extra enrichment and expose them to higher level of language, written language. Most kids can handle at least two grade levels above their current age in terms of comprehension. So a typical kindergartener, I wouldn’t want to just read aloud to them something that’s considered a kindergarten book. They could probably easily handle a second or third grade novel or book about planes.
[00:25:57.640] – Hilary Erickson
Yeah, that’s awesome.
[00:25:58.360] – Marnie Ginsberg
And they can listen to it.
[00:25:59.530] – Marnie Ginsberg
Oh, man, we loved the books on tape at our house. We had the old Disney Kinds, parents out there. Come on, you remember the little chime as you’d read The Three Little Pigs?
[00:26:08.380] – Marnie Ginsberg
Anyway, I just want parents to think about fun ways that they can introduce learning and honestly get learning even in my middle schooler. During COVID, we didn’t go to the library, we didn’t really buy a lot of books. And so sometimes I’m like, oh, yeah, the library. We need to reintegrate that back into our lives.
[00:26:24.720] – Hilary Erickson
Because it used to be such a big part of our lives.
[00:26:27.730] – Marnie Ginsberg
Yeah, they just shut it down completely in where I was living at the time.
[00:26:30.830] – Hilary Erickson
We could request books, but I found that kids were like, do you want to request one? And she was like, What am I going to request? And I was like, I don’t know. You got to go look.
[00:26:38.660] – Marnie Ginsberg
You don’t have your favorite author at that point when you’re five or seven.
[00:26:42.480] – Hilary Erickson
All right, thanks for coming on, Marnie. Where can people find you?
[00:26:45.790] – Marnie Ginsberg
Well, head over to readingsimplified.com. And if you look for that, the first button, you’ll see an opportunity to download that Switch It game. So the game that pairs the contrast, the letter sounds. So a lot of folks might enjoy that. It’ll help anyone with early on who’s trying to crack the code. And it also helps older students who are struggling with cracking the code, readingsimplified.com.
[00:27:11.940] – Hilary Erickson
Okay, awesome. And your YouTube channel is on there, too, because I thought that playlist with all the PBS stuff.
[00:27:16.510] – Marnie Ginsberg
Yeah, that would be at YouTube.com/@readingsimplified.
[00:27:22.200] – Hilary Erickson
Like the @ symbol?
[00:27:24.440] – Marnie Ginsberg
The @ symbol. Yeah, good question. YouTube.com/@readingsimplified.
[00:27:30.900] – Hilary Erickson
All one word. Yeah, we all just got handles on YouTube.
[00:27:33.460] – Marnie Ginsberg
Yes, exactly.
[00:27:35.600] – Hilary Erickson
All right, thanks for coming on, Marnie.
[00:27:37.060] – Marnie Ginsberg
It’s my treat, Hilary. Thank you.
[00:27:38.860] – Hilary Erickson
Okay, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I don’t know if you’ve listened to my episode that I did, I think, last month on things I did that other parents hate. But there are so many fun ways to integrate letters into your day with your kids. And just talking about letter sounds when you’re in the car, it’s really easy to point out letters.
[00:27:57.770] – Hilary Erickson
So honestly, I think if you just make letters part of your day with little kids, it will slowly become more part of your day. You’re not really teaching reading, you’re just having fun together. And I know as a parent, you’re trying to find ways to talk with your kids or integrate them into the world around them. And learning letters is a great way to do it. So hopefully this gave you guys some ideas. If you have questions for Marnie or you have some thoughts on the podcast about what your kids struggled with, come on over and tell us on Instagram. I will have a post about this episode and we would love to chat with you more.
[00:28:28.220] – Hilary Erickson
Stay tuned. For our pregnant mamas, we are talking about what the hospital does to prevent things from going wrong with you. And the next week we’re having some talk about girl bosses and why we don’t support each other, so stay tuned.
[00:28:40.920] – Hilary Erickson
Thanks so much for joining us on today’s episode. The Pulling Curls Podcast grows when you share us on social media or leave a review. If you do, please tag us so that we can share and send you a virtual hug, which, frankly, is my favorite hugging. Until next time, we hope you have a tangle free day.
The post Teaching Reading with Dr. Marnie Ginsberg of Reading Simplified — Episode 186 appeared first on Pulling Curls.