Melissa & Lori Love Literacy ®

In this episode, we talk with first grade teacher, April Evans, about how she uses Tier 1 foundational skills assessment data to make decisions about small group time, such as how students are groupe…

Pun intended. This episode takes us into the world of Geodes - decodable readers that bridge foundational skills and Wit and Wisdom ELA - through building knowledge and accessible text. Melissa and L…

Primary Teachers: This one’s for YOU! Today we talk with educator, author, and business-owner Elise Lovejoy about decodable texts. What makes texts decodable? What makes quality decodable texts? What…

Researcher Heidi Anne Mesmer joins the podcast to discuss the research on decodable text and dos and don'ts for classroom practice. Thinking about decodability as a meter from most to least decodable…

DJ Bolger, a neuroscientist and associate professor at the University of Maryland College Park, joins the podcast today. DJ helps us understand the dyslexia brain a bit better, shares how dyslexia is…

Trauma impacts every facet of our being. Today we’ll hear from educator and author, Dr. Melissa Sadin. As part of our Dyslexia Awareness month series, Dr. Sadin will share her personal story about ho…

As part of our Dyslexia Awareness Month series, listen again to Dr. Steven Dykstra discuss the devastating effects on students who have not received the instruction they need to be successful readers…

In celebration of Emily Hanford's new documentary series, Sold a Story, listen again to Emily Hanford here!  

Today Emily Hanford joins Melissa and Lori to define the Science of Reading, addressing th…

In this episode, we talk with Sydney Bassard, a clinical speech language pathologist, also known as The Listening SLP. Inspired by her brother’s experience with dyslexia, she became a speech language…

In this episode, we talk with former balanced literacy teacher and parent, Missy Purcell. She authored a blog post titled Dear Balanced Literacy Teacher.

Missy writes, “According to Nancy Young’s lad…

As part of our Dyslexia Awareness Month series, listen to a previous episode with parent and advocate Brett Tingley. 

March 25, 2022
Brett Tingley shares how to harness parent energy and expertise to a…

As part of our Dyslexia Awareness Month series, listen to a previous episode with parent and advocate Katie Hickerson. 

September 24, 2021
“I just thought kids learned how to read… and my daughter did…

As part of our Dyslexia Awareness Month series, listen to a previous episode with parent and advocate Liz Hembling. 

November 24, 2020
Liz Hembling's daughter, Mia, attended a public elementary school…

Today we have a special episode featuring four parents from all over the United States. One thing they have in common is that they have children with dyslexia. They are courageously sharing their sto…

Dr. J. Richard Gentry, Dyslexia Expert and the “Guru of Spelling,” joins us on the podcast today to discuss dyslexia. Dyslexia is a specific learning disability, neurobiological in origin. It’s the #…

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,…

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, professiona…

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 inunda…

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 ep…

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 comprehensio…