Subscribe to the Podcast Welcome to this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast. My name is Jocelyn and I am so pleased to welcome you here. One of the wonderful developments in schools in the past couple of years is that the focus on explicit literacy instruction has extended to the upper primary grades. When we first ran our workshop and online course, Build the Foundations for your Upper Primary Literacy Block, teachers were dabbling. Now, in September 2025, many schools are actively e...| Jocelyn Seamer Education
Subscribe to the Podcast Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Structured Literacy podcast. I'm Jocelyn, I'm so pleased that you've joined me for this episode, recorded here in Tasmania, the lands of the Palawa people. Today we're diving into a topic that I know will resonate with every single listener: the difference between professional learning that actually transforms practice and professional learning that's just... well, a tick a box exercise. I can't tell you how many PLs I've sat through t...| Jocelyn Seamer Education
Executive functions are the mental processes that students and adults use to manage tasks and achieve goals. These include goal setting, organization, cognitive flexibility, working memory, self-monitoring, attention, and inhibition. Executive functions play an important role in supporting proficient reading and writing across all grades. By grade 5, however, students’ success in reading and writing becomes increasing dependent on their ability to apply these executive function processes (M...| Keys to Literacy
Though much of the fascinating information I glean from research never makes it into the story, some of it earns a place in back matter if it has the potential to engage and benefit educators, librarians, parents, and, most of all, young readers. Images and graphics are always a favorite! GIVEAWAY! Leave a comment below … More Especially for Educators: “Back Matter Bounty for the Classroom: Part 2” by Beth Anderson| Beth Anderson, Children's Writer
As I worked on the back matter for what hopefully is book number twelve, I thought about all the fabulous kinds of information that awaits teachers in these often overlooked sections. I’ve ex…| Beth Anderson, Children's Writer
I was so surprised to learn about author Teresa Robeson’s experience creating DISGUSTOLOGY: THE SCIENCE OF GROSS because it’s the opposite of the usual way authors, illustrators, and pu…| Beth Anderson, Children's Writer
A sentence is a collection of words that come together to express a complete thought. Some sentences are short, and some are quite long, depending on how many ideas are included in the sentence. To comprehend a sentence, a reader must process, store in working memory, and integrate a variety of syntactic and word meaning information. A writer must be able to manipulate and add words to write a high-quality, elaborated sentence. Many students who have difficulty with reading and writing benefi...| Keys to Literacy
How does the availability of AI influence writing instruction? How can students use AI to support their writing development? Will using AI diminish the cognitive and academic benefits students gain from writing as a tool for learning? My response to these questions is clear: just because AI can write for students doesn’t mean they no longer need instruction to become proficient writers. The challenge—and opportunity—is to determine how AI can supplement, not replace, best practice for t...| Keys to Literacy
I went to a conference on academic integrity at Randolph College back in 2018. There was one hot topic at the time. It was not AI. It was paper mills. What could be done about paper mills? If one can just pay somebody to write a real paper, however, would one be able to show…| Blog of the APA
