Melissa & Lori Love Literacy ®

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 your teaching world …

Ever thought about the power of words? Join us as we discuss our most requested topic of all time: vocabulary. We have a special guest, fifth-grade teacher Sean Morrisey. We discuss Tier 2 and 3 voca…

Ever wondered how the fascinating world of words impacts our lives? Join us as we sit down with linguist and author Lyn Stone, who shares her insights about vocabulary and etymology. Through her expe…

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 with Nathaniel Swa…

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 misunderstandings and explains…

What if we told you that the science of reading is just as applicable to multilingual learners as it is to monolingual English speakers? Today, we had the pleasure of discussing this topic with Claud…

In today’s episode, Julie Washington discusses how literacy learning can be supported by language variations. Reading and language are intertwined. Reading influences language and language influences…

Secondary educators have students in their classrooms who weren’t taught to read. Because of these reading deficits, students  likely have a difficult time accessing secondary texts and tasks. Our gu…

We talked with the fabulously candid Tim Shanahan about his recent blog post Prior Knowledge, or He Isn't Going to Pick on the Baseball Study that garnered much attention. Should we teach reading str…

Our conversation today illuminates a hot topic in reading - skills and strategies. What’s the difference? Peter Afflerbach, researcher and professor, shares in the podcast that he and his colleagues …

We had the opportunity to talk (again!) with Natalie Wexler about tips for effective remote learning (read her full article located here), the current intersection of students' virtual learning and s…

What is Phonemic Awareness? It’s one component of your literacy instruction. Phonemic awareness means understanding that spoken words are made of individual sounds called phonemes. We want students t…

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 …

In this episode, we’ll discuss an approach to teaching foundational skills known as speech to print. The speech to print approach consists of 4 concepts with consistent logic: 

1. Letters spell sounds (a…

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 com…

Robert Pondiscio, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), asserts that reading comprehension is NOT a skill. Yes, good readers use reading skills and strategies to make meaning. But…

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 thin…

Pamela Snow, professor at Latrobe University in Australia, discusses the arguments that keep surfacing when educators are resistant to move away from balanced literacy. You might have heard a few: 

• Sy…

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 ensur…

We want the shift to reading science to be permanent, not perceived as another ‘educational pendulum swing.’ To do this, it’s necessary to recognize what worked and  didn’t work within balanced liter…