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
A Pattern-Based Approach to Teaching Long and Short Vowels
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Let’s Talk Teacher to Teacher
Still have students who “just can’t get” long vowels versus short vowels—no matter how many anchor charts, hand signals, or reminders you try? In this segment, Dr. Pepin shares the shift that helps it finally stick: stop teaching long/short vowels as something students have to hear, and start teaching them as a spelling decision they can see.
You’ll learn how to simplify instruction by focusing first on one reliable contrast—closed syllables (short vowels) versus silent‑e patterns (long vowels)—and how to give students an easy script (“No e? Closed. Short.” / “E at the end? Silent‑e. Long.”) they can use every time they meet a word.
This episode also walks you through high-impact, low-prep routines that reduce guessing fast: minimal pairs (cap/cape, kit/kite), a “sounds first, then the word” decoding routine, change-one-letter dictation, and simple marking that doesn’t overwhelm the page. Practical, repeatable, and built for real classrooms—because when students can read the pattern, they can read the word.
Check out more at: www.ginapepin.com