Melissa & Lori Love Literacy ® | Science of Reading for Teachers

In this coming Friday's episode we get to talk to the fabulous Richard Gentry again! This time we talk to him about dyslexia to kick off a series of episodes for Dyslexia Awareness Month. Until then, listen to our first episode with Richard Gentry about the importance of spelling!  March 4, 2022 We’ve been asked about spelling and the connection to reading science more times than we can count...

Virginia Delegate, Carrie Coyner, and University of Virginia Professor, Emily Solari, championed action for a bill (now a law ) that put $70 million towards changing colleges of education, professional learning for educators, and curriculum and materials to align to reading science across the state of Virginia. On this podcast, they will share how they accomplished this with 100% agreement from al...

Andrew Watson, educator and author of Learning and the Brain Blog and the book The Goldilocks Map , teaches us how to become healthy skeptics. Cognitive science and literacy intersect as we are inundated with information about reading science, curricular materials, motivation strategies and more. As we learn to discern and distill information, we ask the question: Is there research to support that...

This episode with Lior Klirs connects to Ep. 124: Innovative Assessment with the Louisiana Assessment Team. If you haven't heard this one yet, definitely listen!  From original episode (5/6/22) This episode is the first in a series on a really important topic: Assessment. How can we debunk the idea of ‘standards-aligned assessments’? What about ‘standards-aligned report cards’?  Today’s guest...

Louisiana is a state taking assessment to the next level. In this episode, the assessment team from the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) discusses Innovative Assessments. Reading comprehension is often assessed through cold reads and sometimes familiar topics. The LDOE team tells us how we can change our approach to assessment. We know comprehension is tricky to assess. Why? One word: KNOW...

Diana Leddy of the Vermont Writing Collaborative joins Melissa and Lori to talk about a topic we love: Writing. Specifically, Diana discusses a simple, easy to use tool used to support students with expository writing called The Painted Essay . The Painted Essay works because it helps students understand visually what they are writing and why they are writing it, as well as organize their thinking...

Today Melissa and Lori talk with authors Chase Young, David Paige, and Timothy V. Rasinski, authors of the book, Artfully Teaching the Science of Reading . Teaching artfully means teaching authentically, aesthetically, and creatively. This book shares how to teach the five pillars of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension) artfully. It’s important to really kn...

Artfully Teaching the Science of Reading by Chase Young, David Paige, and Timothy Rasinski is a next step for educators steeped in the science. When we understand reading research and science, we can add art and creativity to the learning space. What does it mean to teach artfully? How can we creatively approach teaching aligned to science? These questions answered (and more) in this book talk.  R...

Melissa and Lori received a question from a listener about classroom objectives. The listener was grappling with the idea that she has to post objectives in her classroom, but they often don't match what reading science tells us about how we teach reading. This question requires us to rethink about "meeting an objective" at the end of a reading comprehension lesson. It's about...

If you loved our recent episode with Julia Lindsey about her book, Reading Above the Fray, you won't want to miss our first episode with her last year! Check it out! From Sept 10, 2021 What are we aiming to accomplish in early reading instruction? Dr. Julia Lindsey asks this  as she tackles topics such as decoding, decodable texts , sound walls, and more. We discuss the role of instruction an...

If you loved our recent episode with Julia Lindsey about her book, Reading Above the Fray, you won't want to miss our first episode with her last year! Check it out! From Sept 3, 2021 What are we aiming to accomplish in early reading instruction? Dr. Julia Lindsey asks this  as she tackles topics such as decoding, decodable texts , sound walls, and more. We discuss the role of instruction and...

Talking with Dr. Julia Lindsey is like popping into the classroom next door to chat with your best teacher friend after school. On this podcast, Julia shares what evidence says that young readers need to know to help them decode words efficiently. We discuss foundational reading skills, starting with oral language and print concepts through multisyllabic word reading. Instructional swaps take this...

Reading Above the Fray: Reliable, Research-Based Routines for Developing Decoding Skills is a must read for all ELA educators Pre-K through 12. Dr. Julia Lindsey outlines the essentials of how children learn to read, the principles of high-quality foundational skills instruction, essential instructional "swaps" to improve reading instruction, and more. Connect with us! Facebook and join...

Dr. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan joins the podcast to share that reading science works for English Learners. What does it mean to use evidence-based instruction to teach English Learners? Dr. Cardenas-Hagan asserts that every language has its own history, its own culture, its own use. Language supports literacy, and literacy support language. With this cyclical understanding, she explains how to use effect...

Literacy Foundations for English Learners prepares educators to enter the classroom with a full understanding of the language and literacy development of English Learners. Remember this:  What's good for English Learners is good for ALL students!  In this book talk, Melissa and Lori unpack the elements of an integrated approach to vocabulary learning in content-rich instruction. They consider...

In this episode, researcher Hugh Catts discusses his pivotal piece titled Rethinking How to Promote Reading Comprehension | American Federation of Teachers . He asserts, “Reading comprehension is thinking with a book in your hand.” There are three factors that impact reading comprehension: the reader, the text, and the activity (task or purpose). He talks with Melissa and Lori about the role knowl...

The Writing Revolution authors, Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler, share a 'revolutionary' approach to writing. The best part: It begins at the sentence level AND content knowledge drives the rigor.  Moreover, there is an overlap in reading, writing, and critical thinking.  What are the principles of The Writing Revolution?  There are six:  Students need explicit instruction in writing,...

Melissa and Lori talk about The Writing Revolution by Dr. Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler. What distinguishes The Writing Revolution and everything else out there? There are two basic principles:  To modulate the heavy cognitive load by beginning at the sentence level.  To embed the writing activities into core content of curriculum so students attain knowledge needed (about knowledge building,...

Dr. Sonia Cabell, Associate Professor at Florida State University , shares the importance of both oral language and content knowledge instruction. Why? Oral language skills underlie our ability to comprehend text. At the same time, the knowledge we bring to a text is THE key determinant on how much we understand that text. This episode speaks to the entirety of the reading rope!  Connect with us!...

Kristin Poppens IS BACK! In this episode, she shares the power of teacher teamwork and collaboration.  Her Kindergarten teammates and Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) join her to explain how they use evidence-based practices to reach 100% success for Every Single Student. All means all!    For resources mentioned in this episode, sign up for our weekly newsletter at literacypodcast.com .  Connect...

Listen Again Kristin is coming back this Friday, and she is bringing a WHOLE TEAM with her! If you haven't listened to her first episode with us from last summer, listen NOW to hear about all that she learned and implemented before hearing how she worked with others to bring that learning beyond her classroom.  From June 2021   Kristin Poppens teaches kindergarten in Iowa and is just learning...

Donna Hejtmanek, teacher and lifelong literacy advocate, joins Melissa and Lori on the podcast. What does Science of Reading really mean? There’s some misinformation and misunderstandings happening recently around the term - some are equating it to phonics. But, Donna asserts, it’s so much more than that! It’s Science of Literacy.  Three years ago, Donna began a Facebook Group titled Science of Re...

Why is teaching reading so important? Melissa and Lori have a conversation with Louisa Moats grounded in this article: Teaching Reading is Rocket Science: What Expert Teachers of Reading Should Know and Be Able to Do. Moats asserts that 95% of students can learn to read when taught to do so using evidence-based practices. In this episode, listen as we discuss and define the term science of reading...

In this episode, Melissa and Lori have a candid discussion about change with Kareem Weaver, co-founder of FULCRUM Oakland : Full and Complete Reading is a Universal Mandate. FULCRUM’s goal is to ensure that every Oakland child is an 'on-time' reader provided with full LITERACY: a fundamental civil right, a powerful protection from the school to prison pipeline, and the cornerstone for a...

From Lori: The Vermont Writing Collaborative authors and educators remind us that kids need to have  deep knowledge of the subject matter that they’re writing about… Science of Writing. This episode also gets me really excited for an episode coming out this summer focused on writing, where we talk about how to extract that knowledge and explicitly teach writing! Listen again or for the first time!...