Reading Inspires by Reading Is Fundamental

Erin Bailey: Welcome to Reading Inspires by Reading is Fundamental.

I'm your host, Dr. Aaron Bailey.

This podcast celebrates the power of books and the joy of reading.

In each episode, we talk with educators, librarians, families, authors, and literacy champions to explore one big question.

What does Reading inspire for you?

Through stories, research, and real world experiences from classrooms, libraries, and homes, we explore what literacy looks like and why it matters.

Whether you're nurturing young readers, shaping learning spaces, or simply love a good book, we're glad you're here.

Let's get inspired.

Today I'm chatting with Dr.

Jill Pen, who is a member of our Early Childhood Literacy Advisory Board.

A couple years ago through the Innovative Approaches to Literacy grant, we launched.

Read for Success Early Childhood, which brings together read alouds and play-based learning.

And Jill as a researcher with a research background, has supported us with our research initiative for this program.

So welcome, Jill.

We'll start with just introduce yourself and share your story and your journey into early childhood education and literacy.

Jill P: Well, thank you.

It's so great to be here talking about my absolute favorite topics.

I'm thrilled to be here.

So yeah, just to, to share a little bit about my path.

I, I really had sort of a moment or an a. Experience that, that made me just fall deeply in love with early education and early literacy.

I had a windy path to that.

I majored in finance as an undergrad.

I love math.

I love numbers.

That'll come around in a minute, but I had a, I was lucky enough to spend a summer.

Working in Chicago in an early childhood classroom.

And I just fell in love with kids that age.

They're so fun, they're so curious.

With reading to them, I just loved it, but it also made me so aware of how important early experiences are and how important early literacy experiences particularly are, and how if you have a good foundation in those that can set you on such.

A fantastic path throughout your life as a student, but also as a lover of reading.

Right.

So I think that, that, that experience really did it for me.

And so I, you know, I decided, hey, I want to teach.

I did that for six years in early childhood classrooms.

I loved that and had some really fantastic experiences, but really what came back to me over and over as I was teaching is just this curiosity about
how these amazing brains were working in these great kids I was working with, and how this language and literacy development was happening, right?

So I felt like I really needed to know those mechanisms, and it also, like I said, became clear to me more and more every day.

How important and how variable those early experiences were and how little resources we have really to devoted to these early experiences and that we need to be using what works to be efficient.

Our little ones deserve this, right?

The best of the best.

And so I think that led me to being a researcher.

This sort of early education world where one of the things I get to do is try to understand what works best.

Why is it efficient cost-wise with our limited resources, and are we doing the best for kids that we possibly can to give them that foundation of early literacy?

So.

That's so the windy path I took to this, to this role now sort of as an early childhood education researcher.

And, and just thrilled that I get to do things like this and have conversations about the importance of some of the things that we all be, can be doing as teachers, as parents to support kids early literacy.

Erin Bailey: Thanks, Jill.

So I had no idea you had a math background.

We have common.

I, I minored in math

it.

it, does make sense how, you know your background is math, but you found this love for reading and fostering literacy with young children, but that analytical part of you.

Is what drew you to the research.

That's, that's fantastic.

So since you are a researcher what does research say is the secret sauce for effective preschool read alouds and, and why does it matter?

Jill P: I love this question because my absolute favorite part of the day when I was a teacher was doing that read aloud and shared book reading.

It was so fun because you know, the kids were engaged.

I was engaged.

We either were laughing or we were talking about a serious topic 'cause we could throw a book or we're just learning cool things.

And so when I sort of got deeply into the research and you know, when I was getting my PhD, I was so excited.

There was this body of.

Research that said, yeah, you're right.

It, it isn't just the fun or you, you don't just think this is a good instructional practice.

This is truly changing kids skills.

And I just am so excited by the fact that this fun activity that we naturally do with kids in homes, in schools actually has meaningful impact on kids skills.

But like you said, what's that secret sauce is the key to it.

Flipping the pages, reading the words off the page is not the key.

That's not the secret sauce.

What the secret sauce is, is the human interaction, the back and forth, the language.

So the question asking the things that are being pointed out during that read aloud, right?

So that is so, so key to making sure.

That this really cool experience, again, that we do naturally is as effective and as efficient as possible.

And so, you know, I, I often try to think about this interaction piece, right?

Is in three big buckets.

And those buckets we know are the types of skills and the types of things we're talking and.

Structure we're doing with kids that we know from research are most impactful to children becoming skilled readers later.

One of those is language.

Using their language.

Language, getting their listening comprehension up and running, right?

You're not doing reading comprehension when you're pre-K, but you are doing listening comprehension, and so you as a parent or teacher, when you're asking good questions.

When you're saying, what do you think is gonna happen next?

You're getting that listening comprehension going.

Another good part about asking a question like, well.

You think is gonna happen next?

A child has to use more than one word to answer that question, right?

And the way to learn language is to use language.

So it's such a wonderful way to sort of build language skills.

The other one is print knowledge.

We know that kids knowing the names of letters and the sounds they make is one of going into kindergarten.

Having that knowledge is one of the best ways to prepare them for reading success.

Print all over books.

It's a great way to point out print, point out letters.

There's your letter a, Amy.

It's right there in that word, right?

Doing, saying things like that.

Get pe.

Kids paying attention to print.

And then the other third piece that I think about that's so good in that interaction, secret sauce, part of read aloud is sounds of language.

Because when kids are learning to decode or sort of read the words, like knowing that CAT says caat and you blend it together for cat, right?

That's a skill.

You've gotta listen to those sounds of language.

So practicing that when you're reading rhyming books, there's so many great rhyming books out there.

Books of ation or books that have the same sound, like Silly Sally is one, right?

So you're getting kids to pay attention to the sounds of language, all of those kinds of activities.

That interaction that you can be doing is absolutely the secret sauce.

And again.

What I love about read alouds is that just makes it easy.

It is natural, right, to ask those kinds of questions 'cause books and that activity itself just makes it easy for the adult to be doing those sorts of things with kids.

Erin Bailey: I That was so helpful the way you broke that down into the three buckets of listening comprehension.

And I noticed you did say listening comprehension rather than reading comprehension because they're young children.

They're being read a too.

Then the print knowledge and then the language sounds.

That's super helpful for the, for maybe some families who might be listening, do you have any tips?

Do they need to cover all of those three buckets in one read aloud, or are they able to, you know, pick and choose as they're going?

Jill P: It's a great question.

And I say this a lot too 'cause I think there's a temptation to ask all the questions all at once, right?

But then what we think about is the story is fantastic as well.

And so we wanna stay to that and keep kids engaged.

So no, not all of those need to be asked at once.

I often think about, you know, and I, and I realize this, like coming from being a teacher, like I really needed to be more planful.

Take a minute.

And this doesn't take a lot of planning.

I am not taking, talking about 15, 20 minutes, I'm talking about.

Take a quick look through the book and think, oh, there's a vocabulary word I might need to, to sort of talk about to, to boost up some listening comprehension.

Or this book has a great print, like sometimes books have really cool looking print.

Like I will definitely wanna print out, print in that sort of look at each book and think about what, what you might wanna pull out when you're reading that book.

And then the other piece I say to your point of, do you wanna hit all three all at once, is.

We all know this.

Kids love to reread books

that you don't just have one bite at the apple in any way, shape, or form.

Sometimes we wish we could move on from a certain book, right?

Which I love about kids too, but you're gonna have chance to read that again.

And so, you know, often if it's like sort of a really cool story, I'll think, oh, that first time around, I'm gonna read this loud, I'm just gonna ask questions about what the story is about.

And then the second time I'll pull out some really cool things about the print.

Third, I'll talk about sounds of language, or if it's an alphabet book.

You know, I won't maybe do as many questions in the listening comprehension space, but I'll talk a ton about letters.

Right.

So just being a little bit thoughtful.

Again, not a ton of time, but a little bit thoughtful about when you pick up a book kind of breezing through and thinking, okay, these are some cool questions I can ask.

I don't have to ask them all at once.

Erin Bailey: That's so helpful.

And I was gonna say that especially for families, if you own the books, you're gonna read them many, many times.

One thing that I experienced the other day actually.

Though, 'cause you know, I read aloud with my daughter, she's five.

Was that I like to ask children to make predictions.

That was always one of my favorite things to ask when I was a teacher too, especially when I taught first grade.

But actually what I discovered the other night was if.

If you know the ending to the book, sometimes can't always ask I think one tip that I learned myself you know, over the course of
the last week or so is if you are gonna ask to make predictions, it's probably best on the first time that you're reading the book.

Jill P: Exactly.

And, and some of the tips too that I, I'd give teachers and parents is just that like, think about how often you wanna ask the same type of question.

I noticed too that teachers and parents often read the title and the author and focus on that a little Once you do it once, you don't really have to do it every time.

Right.

So think about mixing up those questions as you're doing each read aloud.

Right?

So I think it's fine to not ask the exact same questions over and over, but think about sort of varying the types of things you're talking about with the child.

Erin Bailey: Yeah, that's wonderful.

So you mentioned rhyming books earlier.

And you know, we're focusing on very young children, you know, 4, 5 year, six years old, pre-reads really.

And what should teachers look for or families look for when they're choosing books, especially for children to be able to see themselves, learn about world around them, and engage in the kind of

rich language that you shared.

Jill P: Yeah, I love this too 'cause it is one of my favorite things to talk about.

'cause I've done some research in this space and what I say is a balanced diet.

Think about it as we think about sort of what our mules should look like, right?

We need a variety of protein and veggies and, and carbohydrates, right?

The think about it in that same sense, narrative books are fantastic.

There's so much good about narrative books.

You can talk about story structure.

Which is sometimes sort of abstract when you say the words beginning, middle, and end to a three, four, 5-year-old.

That's a very abstract concept.

That's really hard to describe.

But when you are reading a book, it's super easy then to say, oh, at the beginning this happened in the story.

Right?

That's such a great way to get story structure, vocabulary words.

I love reading books about emotions with the kids in my classroom, giving kids the ability to have a new words for the emotion they're feeling.

Just opens up communication lines and books about emotions make it so helpful to talk about it.

Right.

So those sorts of things, and like you said, the prediction and the language comp, listening comprehension piece narratives are spectacular.

What we know when, this is sort of, I was referencing in my research, I, you know, so when I first came to grad school, one of the things I did was try to understand.

What are kids getting exposed to?

And we know about 95% of the time children are getting exposed to narrative books.

What that means is they're not getting a lot of what I call information or narrative books, and those are books about a specific topic.

Dinosaurs, ladybugs, rocks.

Right?

They we're not seeing a lot of those and there's actually a lot of really cool books out there that are purely often pictures and have.

Labels and have bolded words and our new vocabulary and really are about a topic.

And what I love about those books is a couple of things.

One, they look a whole lot, look like a textbook.

And when kids get into third grade and they're moving from this learning to read, to reading to learn, they're gonna have a lot of textbooks.

So if they're really comfortable with that structure, that there's bolded words, that there's maybe a, a, you know, a pop out picture that had labeled parts of a plant or something like that.

If they know, sometimes there's a text box that has a new kind of fact over here.

If that doesn't confuse them, if they're used to that text structure, their comprehension is gonna be that much better.

So getting kids exposed to that young is super important.

There's gonna be technical vocabulary.

Kids love to learn.

No words.

How many little kids do you know that know these really?

Of dinosaurs that I would never know, right.

This is exciting and fun for them.

And then I think kids really love that technical vocabulary.

I think they have fun learning new words like that.

And the information books are such a fun way to learn those new words.

And it can be so motivating because other topics they really wanna learn about.

So the point being, hey, let's have this balanced diet of both narrative books and information books.

And then I also think of other types of books sort of more in that narrative point too, that are.

Alphabet books.

So you are talking about letters and their sounds, rhyming books.

So you're listening to those sounds of language and then books that really help kids understand different cultures maybe that they haven't been exposed to, or different roles in this world that maybe they haven't been exposed to.

Or like I said, emotions being able to talk about their emotions.

Books are such a. Special way to have some of those conversations and learn some of those topics.

So, really that the whole point being like, let's make sure we're, get in a balanced diet when we're thinking about the types of books we're choosing.

Erin Bailey: When you were talking, it was making me think of one of the favorite books that I discovered when my daughter was just a baby and we were reading, you know, board books.

There were all kinds of books that were A, B, C. E books, but about people like a, B, c, biographies where each page would be a Amelia Earhart in the name of someone.

And I enjoyed reading those with her so much because we, she was very young, so at that point, reading was more of a bonding experience.

But for me.

I was learning so much about these amazing too, some of which I never heard of before, and then would go off and do my own research about these people.

And then I started thinking about author's intent.

You know, why, how are these 26 women chosen for this a, b, c of women's history book, you know?

So there was a lot of it.

Although this is a children's book, there was a lot thinking that was going on for me as well.

Jill P: I love it.

I love it.

There are just so many fantastic books out there.

That's part of the fun of this topic as well, is I just think we are so lucky to have this volume of types of books that are just so fun to, to expose kids to.

Erin Bailey: Yeah, and they're, they keep being more, you know, so we can back and read you know, some classics from our childhood, maybe Goodnight Moon, or, you know, I Love You Forever.

One of the, that's my boss, Alicia Levy's favorite book.

We go back and read those and then there.

So many coming out all, all the time, so it's wonderful.

So I wanna ask you about scaffolding.

What are a few high impact scaffolds that teachers can use while they're read alouds and what, what might like?

Jill P: This is one of those where I think to myself all the time, wow, I wish I'd known this when I was a teacher because I really dug into this in my when I was getting my peachy.

'Cause I think what this is helpful is it's in the moment, you know, when you are a teacher, you've gotta make so many in the moment decisions.

And so what I love about thinking.

Speaking about these scaffolding, and as a parent too, what I love about these scaffolding ideas is that I feel like they're just like
something you have in your back pocket and you can pull out when you're like, wait a minute, okay, I didn't explain that correctly.

Or they're not quite getting it right.

So I like to think of scaffolding in sort of two buckets.

One, scaffolding when you know that child needs some extra support in, in whatever we're talking about, whatever questions being asked.

And then two, scaffolding for when.

They really get it and you're ready to challenge them.

Right?

So talking about that first bucket first, like, so you need some extra support.

So say you've asked a question like, what do you think is gonna happen next?

Or, you know, why did something happen in the story?

And it's clear, it's confusing, right?

It's hard.

There's ways that we can ask another question.

So not, you don't have to just sort of move on, but there's ways to ask another question to support learning, to make that kid one feel confident, like, oh yeah, we do get it.

And two, do some learning.

So.

I like to think of three different ways to do that.

One is to reduce choices, right?

So give say, do you think he's going to go to the store or do you think he's gonna go to school?

Right?

And so then instead of having to think of this world of choices, the child then has two to pick from, right?

Makes it so much easier.

The other one that I like to think about is modeling, right?

Sometimes, especially if it's really challenging modeling.

Oh, you're right.

That one's a kind of a tough question, but I know in that part of the story, he was getting his school bag ready, so I think he's going to school.

Let's think about that.

Where do you think he's gonna go and ask that question again?

Give the child the option.

You've modeled the answer, they're gonna say it with you.

Right?

Or there's kind of a co participation when you can have that conversation and then you even say, let's say it together with little kids.

Even just practicing using their language is a great way to do things.

So you can see how those are really supportive of questions been tough, but I've got these little moves I can make to support some learning.

And then you've got, when you're realizing, okay.

This kid's really getting it, I'm ready to challenge.

Right?

And that's where questions like predicting are fantastic because you're getting a child to think really, you gotta make all sorts of
connections about what's happening in this story before and use, like I said, more than one word, a lot of language to answer that question.

That is a great challenge to get sort of all the neurons firing and, and really sort of thinking through a good answer to that.

And then another thing too I'd like to ask is, why do we think something happened?

Again, you've gotta pull together lots of pieces of information and give your own thought and use a lot of language to explain that.

You can see how these are more challenging, but getting kids to practice language and use their listening comprehension skills.

And another one that's really nice and is especially good when you're, you know, as a parent and child reading 'cause you know so much about each other and you've got some individualized attention happening.

Getting them to generalize to something that's happened in their life is going to happen, hasn't happened, but will sort of saying, oh, we're gonna go to the zoo tomorrow.

We're probably gonna see, what do you think we're gonna see?

Right?

Making that connection to their own lives really solidifies knowledge and solidifies the things that you're talking about and can get them thinking.

Oh, this isn't just happen in this story that we're reading here in my living room, right?

It actually happens in our everyday world, and this is sort of world knowledge.

All of that is really good for kids too.

So again, thinking about scaffolding both in a, how can I support when, when a concept isn't quite getting there, and how can I support to challenge as well.

Erin Bailey: Thank you for that.

I think what I got out of that was also permission to ask questions with limited choices.

Because I think a lot of times, and I worked in a lot of schools that were very inquiry based.

I my background is in International Baccalaureate too, and we're, and we're always pushing teachers to ask big finger questions, ask open-ended questions, I think we should be moving towards that.

But those scaffolds for, especially for our very young children and for our English learners, multilingual learners, if, if they don't yet have the.

Language, it is helpful give them choices.

It can actually build their language or to offer a yes or no question.

Something that they can point to or give a physical response to.

Jill P: That's absolutely right and it's so funny.

That's right in line, sort of what I found out, this is one of the things I studied for my dissertation is like, how are teachers using scaffolding?

Because again, it's hard to do in the moment, but that same reaction I saw a lot of that is that we are asking less of those more supportive questions and think about the confidence it gives.

Gives a child to answer those questions.

So of course, those open-ended questions we're using language.

We absolutely wanna ask those.

But in the situations at which it's necessary, those really high support scaffolding questions are so, so important.

You're giving kids confidence.

You know, I've worked with a lot of speech language pathologists in my life and they always say.

It's great to model saying things with kids.

Modeling that good language is one of our best techniques to build kids' language skills.

So don't feel weird about saying it with kids, saying it to kids being really sort of overt about what the answer is because you're giving that child an excellent model of your language, and that's how kids learn language, right?

So,

Erin Bailey: Thank you.

So talked a lot about, you know, this instructional strategies and the scaffolds.

I have heard some critiques before of you, shouldn't you?

Know, stop and ask questions or do so many things when you're reading aloud to kids, it, it takes away the joy or the experience.

So I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about how educators families can keep that balance of reading aloud joyfully and artfully with intentional vocabulary, building comprehension, print awareness.

Jill P: Yeah, absolutely.

And this is for the work that I'm doing now is building some curriculum and some supplements for teachers to do just that.

Right?

You're getting lessons that help you do just that.

A lot of what say to teachers too, and I think this is a good one for parents too, is flip through that book really quickly before you're gonna read and put sticky notes, right.

Children aren't even gonna notice you, but a sticky note there, you know, it's fine.

You put a sticky note on like, oh, this is a vocabulary word.

I, this is the perfect time to do some vocabulary instruction with this word in this book, and we'll talk about it for a minute, and then two pages later, there's some really cool print on this page.

And it's got my child's letter J right there in huge cool letters, right?

We're pointing that out.

We're talking about it right?

Or I wanna, this is the first time we're reading it, I'm definitely gonna ask, what do you think is gonna happen?

Right?

So doing those sorts of things and making sure you know your child or you know your class, right?

How many questions really helps and flows.

So I think making sure you are planful and then making sure you're doing squat kind of the right amount, that it's not over and, but you're still getting the story.

And then when I talked about rereading before, I think what's great about rereading.

Is by the time kids have read a story once or twice, they're getting it.

They're not as much on the edge of their seats, right?

So you can ask a few more questions.

So I always think of that first read aloud, especially if it's a really sort of in-depth story.

I don't ask too many questions just to make sure everybody's getting it and like maybe some prediction.

Then the times after is when you can really load up some of the questions because they're just reading it 'cause they like that story, but they're, they know what's happening and you're ready to ask a few more questions.

Right.

The other piece, as I already talked about information books, a lot of what I love to say to teachers and parents is give them permission.

You do not need to read the whole book.

There is no rule that says you have to sit down with an information book that doesn't have a beginning, middle, and end and read the entire thing.

You really don't.

A lot of 'em are big.

So I'd like to do cool things and kids love this.

Teach 'em about what a table of contents is.

Go to the table of contents and say.

Which, which couple pages should we read today?

And you get to pick from the table of contents and you get to show them that information.

Books don't always have to start and end right.

You can move to page 12 and read the cool thing about the pterodactyl and not start at the beginning.

So, you know, giving yourself that permission, especially with information books, to read small snippets at a time, I think is is super useful.

Erin Bailey: I think too, with very, very young children, you know, 1, 2, 3 year olds, it's absolutely okay not to read it beginning to end or read every words on the page because really they're just, they're exploring at that point.

it, it's about setting up good reading behaviors and setting up good routines for, for yourself to cultivate that joy of reading.

Jill P: Exactly.

It's the joint attention, it's the interaction back and forth, and it's the showing kids literally how a book works.

You know?

You need to learn that a book opens like this, right?

And that print moves from one direction to another.

Those sorts of things are all the really cool things you can be doing when you're reading it with that age group.

It doesn't have to be every single word.

That's absolutely right.

Yeah.

Erin Bailey: So you did mention before, I wish I knew this when I was teacher and I same thing to myself all the time.

What do you think are the most common read aloud misses that you've, you either experienced yourself or you observed even from well-intentioned teachers and family?

Jill P: For sure.

I, I, some of it too is, you know, I felt like I needed to ask the same questions or do the same routines with every book.

Like I said, like the title and author, don't need to ask the same exact types of questions every time.

That's why I really like this idea of being a little bit planful about.

Okay.

With this read aloud, I'm really gonna focus on these types of questions or those types of questions.

So I, I think that's like a, sort of a, a common mistake too.

And then, you know, I've said print knowledge before, but I, I find, you know, in part of the work that I've done, I've seen lots of read alouds and so we see what teachers point out or not.

It's really not that much Print.

Teachers aren't pointing out, print that often.

And I think about back to myself.

I was really focusing on the questions about what the story was about and a little bit less on these concepts of print.

Like I said, how print works on a page, how it's different than a picture.

What direction it's moving.

The names of letters, the sounds of letters, but giving kids that concept of like, we couldn't be reading this page as you know, this, these words off the page.

If we didn't understand that all of these little symbols have a sound and a name, and that pulling together is a word like.

This is the perfect time to get kids talking about print and pointing out print.

And I think that's, that's one of the more common mistakes.

You talk a lot about the story and a little bit less about the print and the, the components of it, which is really key to reading success as well.

Mm-hmm.

Erin Bailey: You know, I had kind of a similar experience.

Reading aloud to my daughter, which I shared before.

She's, she's five.

There's a book called Big and there are several pages in the middle of the book that are wordless pictures, which was a great opportunity to teach about print because we got to those pages and my daughter said, why aren't you reading anything?

I said,

There's no words on this page.

So the author and illustrator just want us to look at this page and, know, then we talked about the illustrations and the character's feelings on those page.

So I think there are lots of opportunities to infuse print knowledge into our, our read alouds.

Jill P: exactly.

Like, you know, there's a meaning, there's a reason we need to write down these little symbols.

Getting that concept is so cool and so beautiful.

And the perfect way to do it during a read aloud, Yeah.

Erin Bailey: So for families listening, what are two or three simple tips that they could start integrating before, during, after reading tomorrow into their story time routine?

Jill P: Yeah, absolutely.

So I mean, this is what's fun about, you know, knowing your child really well.

Like the first step is choosing that book.

What's cool is like, you know, like for example, an information book.

Is dinosaurs.

It is butterflies.

It is rocks it.

Right?

So like you have that, that knowledge of like, oh, I'm gonna get an information book on this topic.

I know this is really gonna hit the spot.

Right.

That, you know, those books that will engage them and you know, which books they wanna reread.

Like I said, there's not a problem with rereading.

It's actually.

A benefit.

It's a great thing.

Like you can infuse so much knowledge with your child when you're rereading.

'cause again, sometimes you're asking language questions, sometimes you're asking some vocabulary within that language.

Sometimes you're pointing out print.

You can do so much when you reread a book.

Right.

And then I think what's also fun about sort of the family piece of this is you can tie in things you've been talking about when you read your book into.

Your day or the next morning, right.

Let's say you were talking about the sound of the letter S when you're reading Silly Sally.

The next day, or you know, you know, later in that day, start pointing out other words that you're encountering in the grocery store, for example, that start with an S, right?

You can then anything you're doing in that real aloud, you can then bring up again and again and again.

Right?

So, I think that's really helpful too.

And then, you know, like what I was saying with the scaffolding, one of the really good ways to get kids to really build background knowledge to truly understand what they're learning.

To use that good language to keep those new vocabulary words they know really in their head is to tie them to their own life.

All of us are the same.

When we have knowledge that makes sense to us, that ties to the background knowledge we already have, it's really gonna sit in your head, it's gonna be solidified, and so you know your child really well, you can start having those conversations.

That say things like, oh, that animal giraffe, remember when we saw that giraffe, x, y, z time.

Right.

That's really gonna help make things concrete for kids.

So there's some really great things, I think that sort of more individual conversations when you can, you can bring out when it's, you know, a, an a caregiver and a child too that are really special.

Erin Bailey: Yeah.

So we always end this podcast by asking what does reading inspire for you?

Jill P: So many things.

I just, you know, in general.

Like I said before, I just love that reading is this gift we can give people for the rest of their lives to open new knowledge for the rest of their lives.

And as an avid reader, joy, it can bring you so much joy, right?

So I just am so inspired by that.

So that's just always a thought process.

But honestly, you know, one of the things that I have been fascinated by and what I've really inspired by reading lately, the more I sort of dig into this research world, is.

How our brains work, how kids' brains work to be readers is just so inspiring to me.

You know, we learn language by being immersed in language rich environments, right?

When we're sort of, you know, surrounded by it, we learn these language skills.

You know, we build that one specific part of our brain that we know is sort of language based, but for reading, we need direct.

An explicit instruction to learn.

We need to build pathways between different parts of our brain to become readers.

You know, the part that's language, the part that know letters, the parts that builds Z sounds together.

And so what I think is so inspiring when we are both reading and we're instructing and reading and we're building.

Brains is that by having these conversations, by doing these read alouds, by talking about early literacy with kids, we're literally building their brains.

We're literally building neural pathways between the parts of the brain that we need to work together.

To learn to read.

And to me that's a miracle.

It's fantastic that the things that we can be doing as adults with kids can then build their brains to give them this gift of reading.

So lately that's been inspiring me to think about us as builders of really strong brains to, to give this gift of reading.

Erin Bailey: I love that Jill reading is the gift that keeps giving and I think

your mathematics background coming back there too about how we can build.

Build their brains through, through reading have that be a gift for them.

Thank you so much.

And thank you for listening to Reading Inspires by Reading is Fundamental.

I hope today's conversation sparked new ideas, meaningful connections, and a renewed love of reading.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, share it with a fellow literacy champion, and join us next time as we continue exploring what reading inspires.