Melissa & Lori Love Literacy ®

Sound wall expert Mary Dahlgren explains how sound walls differ from word walls, why it's important to teach all 44 speech sounds, and how sound walls can help students make sense of English. She sha…

In this conversation, Becky Pallone and Michael Hart discuss how their phonemic awareness instruction  has evolved over time. They emphasize the importance of blending and segmenting as key skills in…

Melissa and Lori just returned from the Plain Talk About Literacy & Learning Conference in New Orleans and they will share their takeaways with YOU! Attendees called in while at the conference to sha…

Matt Burns discusses the importance of phonemic awareness in reading instruction. Phonemic awareness is an outcome of skilled reading, not a precursor, and it has a reciprocal relationship with readi…

Shayne Piasta discusses best practices for teaching alphabet knowledge. She tells us what the research suggests about teaching  letter names and sounds, why teaching a letter of the week may not be t…

Summary
In this episode, the hosts discuss the RAND Model, a heuristic for thinking about reading comprehension. The model was developed in the late 1990s by the RAND Corporation in response to a need…

Summary
In this episode, Hugh Catts discusses two popular reading models: the Simple View of Reading and Scarborough's Reading Rope. The Simple View of Reading highlights the importance of word recogn…

Summary

In this episode, the hosts discuss the five pillars from the National Reading Panel and their history. They explore the confusion that can arise from viewing these pillars as a model of how re…

FROM MARCH 10, 2023

Today we’ll be talking to a team of authors about a recent article they published on small group instruction, titled Maximizing Small-Group Reading Instruction. We ask and answer i…

Why shouldn’t we level students? 

Professor and researcher Kristin Conradi-Smith from episode 143 says, “We lack research for differentiation by text levels.There's simply no support for it.”  Teachin…

FROM FEBRUARY 24, 2023

In today’s episode, we discuss the structure and content of the literacy block. How can we teach using structured literacy in small groups? Kinder teacher Casey Jergens and auth…

What does the research say about small group reading instruction?

Resources

• Episode 142: Structured Literacy in Small Group Time
• Episode 143: Maximizing Small Group Reading Instruction 
• Maximizing Small …

FROM JULY 7, 2023

Today we talk about fluency and assessment with Jan Hasbrouck. She shares tips and tricks for how to to best assess and teach fluency. She also debunks frequent fluency misunderstand…

Is your district adopting a new English language arts/literacy curriculum? Have you wondered how to tell if an ELA curriculum is “knowledge-building?” Today we’ll be talking to Barbara Davidson and S…

FROM JULY 14, 2023

What if you could unlock the secrets to fluency instruction in literacy, and transform your students into confident and skilled readers? Join us as we delve into this crucial topic …

Funds of Knowledge are the skills and knowledge gained by daily routines and practices, as well as cultural and historical interactions. It’s the social and cultural “stuff” that students know throug…

FROM AUGUST 4, 2023

What if the key to unlocking your students' reading comprehension could be found through a deeper understanding of the intricate processes at work in their minds? Prepare to have y…

Are You Adopting a New ELA Curriculum? Where Do You Start?

One place to start your curriculum adoption journey is EdReports. It’s not the ONLY place by any means, but it is a helpful jumping off point…

From October 21, 2021

Kory Jensen is a 4th grade teacher in Colorado, obsessed with learning more about reading science! He read The Knowledge Gap by Natalie Wexler… which set him off to learn more a…