Anya: Hello and welcome to Red Penned: a podcast on writing across the disciplines! I’m your host Anya Ricketson, a third-year English major at UGA. This season is called Intro, Body, Conclusion and I’ll be focusing on writing assignments. In this episode, I’ll be talking to Ida Klausen.

Ida: I’m Ida Klausen. I’m a third year Elementary Education major with a minor in teaching English to speakers of other languages.

Anya: Recently, for her Reading Instruction in The Elementary School class with Dr. Mary Guay, Ida wrote a paper titled The Reading Process Over Time.

Ida: So, this essay is about the reading process over time. So it’s kind of about how children’s reading skills develop throughout like elementary school. It goes through the stages in which children develop their reading and how I as a teacher can support those different stages of reading development. For us it was really just to show what we learned from the class because this was for like a reading class and so it was like our final essay to describe like everything we had learned in the semester about how children learn how to read.

Anya: Like Ida said, the paper was meant to be an overview of what they had learned over the course of their whole semester. Her professor gave her a series of guidelines that illustrated this. 

Ida: We were supposed to describe aspects of the reading process and how it changes over time and we were also supposed to have citations from course readings and describe how our understanding of the reading process will impact our instructional strategies and decisions as a teacher. We had assignments during the semester that were kind of smaller assignments within each of the stages but I think she wanted us to show like our general understanding of the whole concept of reading development over time and so rather than just doing something small for each stage it was something cumulative.

Anya: This kind of cumulative paper appeals to Ida’s personal style a lot more than other kinds of writing she’s had to do in the past.

Ida: So, I’ve never really liked writing essays. I mean, I’ve always been more of a science, math, kind of person and I do like writing, like I like coming up with stories and just like writing creatively is I think more fun for me. But I think throughout school, especially middle and high school, they really ingrain in you like, “you have to follow this structure, you have to say this, you have to say that, and if you don’t say these specific things you’re gonna get points off of your essays.” Is like my experience with writing essays throughout like public school, and so I think that just made me hate writing essays, because I don’t want to follow those (laughs), I don’t want to follow those rules I just want to write what I want to write about without those restrictions. But I think college, at least for education, has been a little bit more flexible with that. It’s about what we’re saying and like us displaying what we know rather than like them trying to get us to say something specific. Because I think in high school why I didn’t like it was, first of all it was just harder for me than other subjects for some reason, but it was also because, for example for like a literature class we would read a book and then have to like write an essay about the analysis of that book, and then I found it really annoying when I worked really hard on something and wrote what my thoughts were and what I noticed, and then got points off for something that maybe I didn’t notice or I didn’t analyze it in that way, and my teachers would be like, “well you didn’t write about this,” and I’m like, “well that’s because I didn’t analyze it in that way,” you know? And so this is just like a little more flexible I would say, but it’s still not my favorite thing.

Anya: Because she doesn’t love essay writing, I asked Ida how often she has to write papers like this one, which unlike her highschool argumentative papers, focus more on application.

Ida: Occasionally, yeah we’ll be asked to write about an educational concept and then like also in that same essay write about what we would do as a teacher. Like applying what we’ve learned. Which also makes it more enjoyable, rather than just writing about something that you don’t have a use for. Like this is really like actually helping us becoming better educators I think, because we’re learning things and then we’re also getting to apply them. 

Anya: I was fascinated to hear about what Ida’s process was when starting a project like this one. I was curious what ways she worked to make the format easier for herself.

Ida: Well I look at the requirements, and so the requirement was to describe aspects of the reading process and how it changes over time. So then I’m thinking, “Okay, changes over time, that’s easy, it’s just like, over time.” So then I think my plan was to kind of just do a paragraph for each like stage of reading development. So, I kind of had two different things to write about. I had to write about the reading process and how it changes over time, and I had to write about how those stages will impact my teaching. And so, I kind of decided to do that as two separate parts, because I felt like it would be effective to first describe the reading process like generally and like provide an overall view and then describe like how I would implement that in my teaching. But I also could have done it another way and just described one stage and then described how I would handle that as a teacher and then described the next stage and then described how I would handle it as a teacher again. But I just chose to do it the other way. I think it was just to show my knowledge first of what I knew about the reading process and like kind of give that overview of everything before diving into the more specific details. 

Anya: Since we’re diving more into the specific details, I asked Ida what order she likes to write her papers in, since I’d learned from my previous guests that sometimes the Intro doesn’t necessarily always come first.

Ida: I try to just write the essay from top to bottom, but sometimes that just doesn’t work. So usually I’ll like try to start with the introduction, but if that like, if I don’t really know what to write in the introduction then I’ll just move on to the first paragraph and then come back to the introduction later. 

Anya: I definitely related to Ida on that one, I always get stuck half way through my intros. Starting on body paragraphs can be such a good way to get your brain flowing to help you write the rest of your paper. Moving on, I wanted to hear a little bit more about selecting quotes for an overview paper like this one.

Ida: Well, for this class every reading that we did I took notes on, and so I would go back and reference my notes, and then figure out what part applied to what I was writing about, and then go back and find that reading, and find a quote from it that fit with what I was trying to say. So I would just go back and like look at the notes that I took and then if any of it like applies to what I’m trying to find a quote for then I can just look at that reading.

Anya: Because her paper is an overview, it uses quotes differently than an essay that requires a lot of analysis.

Ida: I think I use quotes to kind of support what I’m saying or to restate what I’m saying. 

Anya: As I continued reading Ida’s paper, I was curious about her conclusion, since to me it felt like she had mostly inserted a concluding sentence at the end of her final paragraph.

Ida: Personally, this is kind of a controversial opinion, but I just don’t think that in writing like introduction and conclusion paragraphs are like necessary at least like for what I’m writing about. I feel like a lot of the times I just feel like I’m repeating myself. And that might just be because I’m not great at like trying to write things in fun ways but I find it super annoying to have to write a conclusion paragraph. Like introduction paragraphs I understand because you’re trying to get like an overview of what you’re trying to say, but a conclusion paragraph? It’s like, “I already said everything that I needed to say in the body paragraphs, so why would I write a conclusion paragraph? There is nothing else that I wanted to say.” So I think my last paragraph, I had already in my body paragraphs just discussed the different stages and so in my last paragraph rather than doing a conclusion, I kind of did an overview of the structure of my teaching. Because before that I was going specifically into each stage and what I would do as a teacher in that stage. But then the last paragraph is like, “okay, those are for each stage, but this is generally like for each grade heres how I would implement these strategies by using the Book, Head, Heart method and also the daily five centers, but those apply to like all of the stages. So it was more just kind of like an overall like idea of what my teaching would look like in reading, and I kind of use that as a conclusion.

Anya: Stay tuned after the break to hear about Ida’s personal writing style, and how she and her fellow teachers are teaching reading and writing to future generations.

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Anya: When I was first reading Ida’s paper, I quickly noticed her use of rhetorical questions, especially in her introduction, where she writes “How does this change happen? What are the aspects of reading that change over time?” I wanted to hear from her about why she decided to include something like this that is not necessarily something that is traditional to see in an academic paper.

Ida: Okay, well in high school I learned to never ask a question in your essays, like it’s bad to ask rhetorical questions, but I’m like, “It’s college and my teachers don’t care. They just want to see what I want to know, and this is like how I wanted to write it.” I don’t know because I was like, this is what I’m answering, like these questions are what I’m answering and I just want to say that I’m gonna answer these questions.

Anya: I also asked Ida what else, besides rhetorical questions, she would say defines her personal writing style.

Ida: I’m very fond of like transition words, you know? Like, “In the beginning, next, finally.” Which is like very basic but also like that’s not what matters for this kind of writing really but that’s just what makes it easier for me to like say what I’m trying to say. I mean for me, when I’m reading something and trying to like skim it, then I look for those transition words. Like if it says, “finally,” I’m like, “okay here’s the last part of it,” or like if it says, “next,” and then like a sentence and more sentences, sometimes I’ll just read the first sentence that says next because it’s like, “okay that’s like the next thing.” For me it just like makes it easier to organize and easier to understand.

Anya: Since Ida is in training to be a teacher, I really wanted to pick her brain about how reading and writing are taught to kids and how that allows them to transition into adept adult writers. But, we came upon a roadblock. 

Ida: Okay, well let me just go on a rant first really quick, about the education for future teachers of the education system. (Laughs) Because, some of it like, so we’ve taken this reading class now, which was great and we learned a lot from it, and now we’re taking our writing class, and this writing class is not giving us the information that we need to know. Because it’s more teaching us how to be like creative writers which is like really fun like we’re writing like reversed fairy tales and like working on like ideas for children’s books and things, but we’re not actually learning how to teach children how to write which is really frustrating. So I’m just gonna say what I learned about the reading process, which is definitely connected with writing, but we haven’t actually learned a lot of concrete information about teaching kids how to write yet which is really frustrating because it’s a huge part of teaching children like in all grades of elementary school is like teaching them how to write. We’ve never learned anything about grammar, like or how to teach kids grammar, or about punctuation like where to put commas and stuff. But we’re taking another like literacy class next semester. So hopefully we’ll get into some like more writing stuff then and learn more about that because I definitely feel like that might be a gap in what we’re learning.

Anya: Though she couldn’t tell me too much about writing, she went over with me what teaching kids to read looks like.

Ida: But as far as the development of reading, you have to start with teaching kids how language actually works. And so it’ll be a lot of like actually speaking to your children and creating a language rich environment is what they call it, where you’re not necessarily focusing on like reading or writing, but you’re just focusing on making sure they understand words and what they are. And then eventually you move on to introducing the idea that what you say can be written down. And so, kind of transitioning from verbal like speech to something that you can physically see on paper. In the first stage you really start by more like storytelling and so it’s a lot of read alouds and reading books to kids and like explaining what you’re seeing and pointing to the words and how do the pictures connect with the words and what is your thought process when you’re reading. Because kids don’t just know how to like read a book and think about what’s gonna happen next like you have to ask them like, “Oh, I see this just happened, I wonder what’s gonna happen next.” And like you have to get them to start thinking about those kinds of things. And then you can start, like once they understand that print is like oral language that’s kind of captured and like put down, then they can start associating what you say with what’s written down. And so you kind of start with, not even writing and like writing out letters, you start with just sounds, and so you take a word like, “cat,” and then you have to have to have them figure out how many sounds are in the word, “cat.” And so you can kind of do like a finger tapping like, “Cuh,” “Ah,” “Tuh,” so that they like separate each word into it’s sounds. So you’re, you just have to kind of keep on helping them with understanding words and what they are and what sounds are in the words, because you can’t learn how to like spell or read anything without understanding like what the different sounds in a word are. And then once they kind of have a grasp of like sounds, then you can start to associate those sounds with letters. And so that’s when you start making that connection. Like with cat, like, “Cuh,” “Ah,” “Tuh,” so then they hear, “Cuh,” and then they may be thinking like K or C like then you teach them the different sounds that letters can make, and A is for apple, a says, “Ah,” “Cuh,” “Ah,” and like T says, “Tuh,” you know? And so sometimes they’ll usually have, an, like an alphabet on the wall, and then like a picture is associated with each letter. And I think something that I’ve noticed change like from my schooling experience is they’ve gotten a lot more specific with these sounds. When we learned the letter Q, usually you would just see the letter Q and it would be like a picture of a queen or something but Q is never on it’s own in the English language, and so now in classrooms the alphabet on the wall doesn’t just say Q, it says Qu, like they’re always put together. Another example is like, combinations of letters that always make the same sound, like Sh. So they’ll have the alphabet and then they’ll also have like this combination of Sh, and that says, “Shhh,” or they’ll have like Ck put together always says, “Cuh,” and so then they like kind of learn the letters connection to the sound. Now we can kind of see how kids will learn how to read so they can look at letters like one letter at a time seeing what sounds it makes or like if it’s two letters together then then they’ll know what sound those two letters make together. Go through the different types of vowels and like short vowels, long vowels, and like what makes it short or long. Like you have to teach them all of these specific things. And then you can get into more reading as a tool, because once they start reading they’re reading just to read, you know? But once they kind of get more into words and how they work then they can start reading for fun. So then they’ll start reading longer books, books with several lines of text in a row and just not thinking about the fact that they’re reading but just reading to read and reading to learn something or reading for fun or for imagination. 

Anya: As always, for my final question, I asked Ida what advice she would give someone writing this kind of paper for the first time, but for Ida I also asked what advice she would give someone teaching reading for the first time.

Ida: I’m not sure about advice for writing an essay because I don’t think I’m like (laughs) maybe the best person to ask about how to write an essay because I just kind of write what I want to write. But I mean I guess that can be important too, is like, I guess write whatever comes to mind write whatever you think is most important that you’ve learned and then if you want to make it fancier or like adhere to like what your high school English teacher would say then like edit it, like fix it, but me personally I’m like, “at this point in my life it’s not relevant to me any more so… I don’t know.” But as far as teaching, like I think the most influential thing is just getting out there and just seeing it happen in real life because you can learn about it in class as much as you want but you’ll never be able to actually understand until you see a kid actually learning how to read, and see how what you say to them impacts how they read things. Like it’s actually crazy to see how much you can change. Even just me as a student teacher who goes twice a week like, I can see like the kids that I work with more like how they’re changing over time and it’s really cool. I mean I think for reading it’s like kind of important that you do have an understanding of how the english language works because sometimes kids will ask things and like you’ve never thought about it before like I just… I don’t really remember learning these types of things in elementary school but it’s like, kids learn it somehow, and like you might not remember it but it’s because of your teachers like really knowing the rules of English and like teaching you that if an E comes at the end of a word then the vowel is a long vowel and it says its own name and like teaching you all these tricks to like help you. And so I think even though I haven’t learned that in my classes, I know that before I go and have a teaching job I’m gonna do my own research and like learn all of this stuff really specifically and figure out how I can explain it well to children. 

Anya: Having Ida on the podcast reminded me that learning to read and write is always an ongoing process. Just like her students are learning, so is Ida, and so am I. Having reading and writing there as a tool for us as we learn to be professionals in all our various disciplines is an invaluable skill, and I am so thankful to all the teachers and professors I have had throughout my life for showing me all the different ways I can utilize it, from the elementary school classes Ida teaches to the college classes I take now. 

Anya: Ida, thank you so much for talking to me.

Ida: You’re welcome!

Anya: Just for hanging out and…

Ida: Yay!

Anya: having a good time.

Anya: This podcast is sponsored by the Franklin College Writing Intensive Program, which gives faculty the opportunity to offer writing-intensive courses in all disciplines, including over 20 departments: from art history and women’s studies to genetics and anthropology. This podcast reexamines the way writing is taught and learned through all majors and programs of study—across the curriculum here at UGA. You can find episodes of Red Penned on Apple Music, Spotify and the Writing Intensive Program’s Website. Have a great day.