ICYMI: My Conversation With Grammar Girl

A Fangirl Moment

When I was a classroom teacher, I consistently used Grammar Girl’s “Quick and Dirty Tips” to help students improve their writing. To say I was a fan of Mignon Fogarty is to put it mildly. Her work on grammar supported my students work with language for years. Students would read a short article like “How to Use Commas” and apply it to an essay they were drafting on the causes of the French Revolution. I would turn an article on “affect vs. effect” into a short lesson on language that students would apply to their summaries on the impacts of famine in post-colonial West Africa.

Fast forward a decade: I’m living in Reno and a good friend actually knows Mignon. As in, has lunch with THE Grammar Girl. Still a fan-girl, I was always envious. And then I had to do a double take when said friend introduced me to THE Grammar Girl over email with the subject line of “questions about literacy”. Mignon and I connected and had a long conversation about the literacy landscape in the US. This led to a podcast on the same subject. If anyone had told me when I was teaching “affect vs. effect” that I would later be a guest on Grammar Girl’s podcast I would have laughed at the idea. And now I find myself delighted to have had the opportunity. 

Our Conversation

Mignon and I talked about national literacy rates, why literacy rates are so low for Americans of all ages, and what you can do for readers in your life (both young and old!). In this excerpt, we are chatting about some of my favorite moments teaching high school students who could not yet read at grade level.

You can get the full conversation at the links below:

• Watch: https://youtu.be/mLwMZ3sf2cM

• Read: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/crist/transcript

• Listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-kids-cant-read-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-with-kate-crist/id173429229?i=1000698059752

Subscribers will get bonus content - Mignon and chat about what really is the science of reading? 

Literacy Resources

In the Grammar Girl podcast I name a number of resources. You can get a full list here. I thought it was worth re-listing some of those resources here. They are a bit of departure from this blog’s usual focus on secondary literacy, but they are worth exploring if you want to better understand the national literacy challenge and/or help readers in your life. 

Curious about national literacy rates?

• Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)

• National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 

Curious about why literacy rates are so low in this country?

• The Right to Read 

• The Truth About Reading 

• Sold a Story 

Curious about how to help the readers in your life? 

• These Family Guides from Seek Common Ground are designed to help adults better understand what their kiddos should know and be able to do at each grade level. 

• To understand how we learn to read, this graphic guide cannot be beat: How We Read (It was written for adolescent students, it’s great for adults too.)

• Quite a few materials are made for parents to use at home to support skilled reading. I have used some portion of these with all my own kis: Reading Buddies, Toddlers Can Read, Learning Dynamics, How to Teach your Kid to Read in 100 easy lessons  

• For older readers: check out City Stories books and this set of recommendations from the Literacy Architects (and if you want to get super nerdy, this article from Reading Rockets).

• FULCRUM has a great set of resources to help you advocate for better literacy outcomes in your local school or district. 

Do you have resources you use to support the readers in your life? Have you listened, read, and still have questions? Comment below! 👇🏼