Melissa & Lori Love Literacy ™

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 reading. It’s a reciprocal process! How can we, as educators and practitioners, leverage students’ strengths in language variations to learn to read? What if we told you that understanding language variations could significantly impact the way we approach literacy and education for African American children? Join us in this insightful conversation with Julie Washington, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in the intersection of language and literacy. Discover how her research on language variations as a strength, rather than a weakness, can reshape our perspectives on cultural dialects, early literacy skills, and language development.Julie brings her expertise to light by highlighting the importance of African American English in the classroom and the challenges it faces, both from the broader society and within the African American community. We explore the practical consequences of treating this dialect as low-prestige and discuss the need for students to be able to use both systems of language. We dive into resources for educators to better understand these variations and emphasize the importance of differentiated instruction and high expectations for all students. Tune in and equip yourself with the knowledge to make a difference in the lives of your students, no matter their language background.ResourcesTeaching Reading to African American Children by Julie Washington and Mark Seidenberg Struggling Readers Who Speak African-American English Need Support - And Respect by Natalie Wexler Minority Student Achievement Network The Opportunity Myth by TNTPThe Academic English Mastery Program by LAUSDConnect with usFacebook and join our Facebook Group Twitter Instagram Visit our website to stay connected with Melissa and Lori! Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.  We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.

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 guests today, Supt. Sherry Sousa and Educator Julie Brown, discuss a secondary intervention they developed that WORKS and is totally doable. The best part? Students partake in the intervention in addition to - not instead of - their regular high school English classes. ResourcesNo Time to Waste: Structured Literacy for Young AdultsAmeer Baraka video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyFiOYCqvyk Connect with usFacebook and join our Facebook Group Twitter Instagram Visit our website to stay connected with Melissa and Lori! Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.  We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.

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 strategies? How important is building knowledge? What are reading skills vs. strategies? How frequent should strategy instruction occur in concert with knowledge building? He also weighs in on the current crisis to share his thoughts on how families and educators can best serve students at home. We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.

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 surveyed educators and  “ten people would give us ten different answers. They were all kind of related, but all different.” Peter explains that with practice, strategies require less deliberate attention. When strategies become effortless and automatic, the reading strategy has become a reading skill. This is bound to change based on complexity of text and topic, so we learn that knowledge plays a critical role in strategy use and comprehension, too. ResourcesClarifying Differences Between Reading Skills and Reading Strategies, The Reading Teacher Teaching Readers (Not Reading): Moving Beyond Skills and Strategies to Reader-Focused Instruction by Peter AfflerbachShedding Light on Reading Skills and Strategies | Shanahan on Literacy  Comprehension Skills or Strategies | What’s the difference and does it matter? Connect with usFacebook and join our Facebook Group Twitter Instagram Visit our website to stay connected with Melissa and Lori! Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.  We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.

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 strategy-focused instruction (due to lack of knowledge-based, high quality curricula) and how parents are noticing! How can we teach strategies in context while building knowledge? Listen to find out!More recently, Wexler wrote a piece titled How Reading Instruction Oppresses Black and Brown Children, located here. She ends with this quote: "If people truly understood the needless damage being done by our schools every day, they would be out in the streets demanding change." Natalie, we hear you, and WE ARE! We are shouting from the rooftops... or more accurately, shouting from the podcast apps! :)American Educator magazine released an excerpt of The Knowledge Gap - find it here!  We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.

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 to be able to isolate, blend, segment, and more. Can it be ‘done in the dark’? Or should we teach phonemic awareness with print? Listen and learn as we explore this important question (and more) in today’s episode. ResourcesThey Say You Can Do Phonemic Awareness Instruction “In the Dark”, But Should You? A Critical Evaluation of the Trend Toward Advanced Phonemic Awareness Training Ep. 142: Structured Literacy in Small Group TimeChoosing and Using Decodable Texts by Wiley BlevinsPhonemic Awareness vs. Phonics Heggerty What are Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness? Heggerty Free Sample Lessons HeggertyConnect with usFacebook and join our Facebook Group Twitter Instagram Visit our website to stay connected with Melissa and Lori! Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.  We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.

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, while connecting decades of research and theory to classroom practice.   We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.

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: Letters spell sounds (alphabetic principle) Sounds can be represented by one or more letters Sounds can be spelled different waysSpellings can be pronounced in different ways What is the difference between speech to print and a traditional print to speech approach? What does the speech to print approach look like in practice? What does the research say about this approach?  ResourcesTriple R Teaching Podcast related episodes:Print to speech vs Speech to print: What’s the difference?How to add speech to print elements to your phonics instruction Reading SimplifiedPhonicBooks Evidence Based Literacy Instruction (EBLI)Phonics: Speech to Print vs Print to Speech WebinarThe Seidenberg and McClelland (1989) model of visual word recognitionInternational Dyslexia Association Fact Sheet on Phoneme Awareness The Latest Research (And Debate) on Phonological and Phonemic Awareness Instruction by Susan Brady Speech to Print or Print to Speech: What's the difference?  blog, by Tami Reis-Frankfort, Phonic BooksWhy Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It,  book, Diane McGuinnessStanislas Dehaene: Book, We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.

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!  We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.

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 good readers also have a robust knowledge base.  There is strong evidence to support knowledge building ELA curriculum, but we continue to wonder about what knowledge, whose knowledge, and how much? ResourcesRecht & Leslie Baseball Study  Wanted: A Science of Reading Comprehension movement | The Thomas B. Fordham InstituteReading comprehension is not a “skill” | The Thomas B. Fordham Institute Why doesn’t increasing knowledge improve reading achievement? Tim Shanahan Ep. 124 Innovative Assessment with the Louisiana Assessment Team Melissa and Lori Love Literacy podcastCultural Literacy by E.D. HirschWhat Reading Does for the Mind Cunningham and Stanovich Connect with usFacebook and join our Facebook Group Twitter Instagram Visit our website to stay connected with Melissa and Lori! Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum.  We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.Join our community on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.