Reading specialist and former classroom teacher Elizabeth Scully works with students who need reading help in a suburban school district in Western New York. She has also written numerous decodable books published by Cherry Lake Press’s Cherry Blossom imprint. We asked her about her experience in both of these professions.
What was your shift from educator to author like?
During the pandemic, it became more clear that many kids are struggling with reading. My former graduate school professor Cecilia Minden has written for Cherry Lake for a long time, and after the pandemic, she had an even bigger workload, so she contacted me to help. It’s always been my hope to write, and
the stars aligned.
I started teaching in 2003, and in reading education itself some things have not changed at all, and some things have rapidly changed since then. I do think there’s sometimes a pendulum effect, and it has necessitated quite a bit more need for decodables right now, and it’s been building.
How do you balance the decodable aspects of your books with an engaging story?
You can’t hand a struggling reader books that they can’t decode through because they haven’t mastered all the vowel and consonant sounds yet. So, you’re consistently trying to write small texts with just that corpus of letters and sounds that they do know. But none of us sits down to read books for the simple act of huffing and puffing through sounds. We read because we want meaning. That’s the piece that I feel has been missing with decodables. But at Cherry Lake there is a big push to create a story and put some meat behind something that kids can decode.
Is there a need for decodables outside of the school setting?
I want every kid in the library finding a book that brings them joy, that makes them want to continue reading. So it’s fun to now see some decodable books in public libraries, where kids can take them out and build their confidence. We have to think about access. What are we giving our kids? Yes, we want them to get to the Magic Tree House series. We want them to be able to read glorious chapter books with amazing messages. But before you can read those, you have to learn how to read, and that’s the piece that we need to make sure that we aren’t missing and that’s available at every kind of library, both school and public.
What’s one of your favorite things about being a reading specialist?
Our greatest desire is to help kids and then get them moving with enough action that they can continue on their own without our help. We’re finally getting more books that the kids can read, not just guess at. When they can figure out how to decode through the words, and when the skills that I am teaching them during their reading lessons can be applied directly to the books that they’re working on, it’s like a perfect handshake.
