Let's Talk, Teacher to Teacher With Dr. Gina Pepin
Welcome to the Let’s Talk, Teacher to Teacher podcast. My name is Dr. Gina Pepin - and I am so happy to meet you. I am a mom, teacher, professor, supervisor for teacher candidates, a reading specialist and a whole lot more! I am the 2023-2024 Region 1 Michigan Teacher of the Year and State Finalist - and also served in this role as part of the very first group of Regional Teachers/State Finalists of the Year in 2018-2019. But what I want you to know the most about me is… I have a great passion for early literacy and teacher preparation and the thing I am most proud of is of course our children… but my once in a lifetime chance to become a co-author, along with the extremely talented children’s author - Eric Litwin ! Together… we wrote: The Power of Joyful Reading: Help Your Young Readers Soar to Success. You can learn more about me - my experiences, how to hire me to speak at your workshops, schools, teacher programs etc… at www.ginapepin.com
I offer you practical make and takes - easy tips along with real life shared stories - so that you can easily create joyful shared reading experiences and other amazing strategies and approaches in your learning space/s right away.
I am here to help you make powerful changes - Let’s do this together.
Check out the Ride and Read program I designed along with 100s of FREE resources at www.ginapepin.com and https://www.instagram.com/drginapepin/
Let's Talk, Teacher to Teacher With Dr. Gina Pepin
Making Decoding Visible for Students Who Overapply Long Vowels
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Let’s Talk Teacher to Teacher
Some students know phonics rules—but apply the wrong one at the wrong time. If you have a reader who turns pop into pope, sack into sake, or “fixes” unfamiliar words to make them look more like real ones, this episode is for you.
In this Teacher-to-Teacher conversation, Dr. Gina Pepin breaks down what these long-vowel errors actually signal (hint: they’re not random), how nonsense-word reading can reveal the root issue, and what to notice when a student has a “long-vowel bias” or guesses after decoding silently.
You’ll walk away with fast, classroom-ready routines you can start immediately—minimal-pair contrasts (CVC vs. CVCe), quick pattern sorts, word chaining, “mark it before you read it,” and dictation moves that force students to choose the vowel sound based on the print. Plus, you’ll get an easy progress-monitoring probe to confirm the instruction is working in just 1–2 weeks.
Practical, systematic, and doable—because the print provides the evidence, and we can teach students to look for it.
Check out more at www.ginapepin.com