Shannon and Mary chat about how to best support learners with working memory challenges.  This is a companion episode to a deep dive learning topic we went through with our Patreon community about Working Memory.    Listeners to this episode will walk away with increased awareness about which students may have working memory challenges AND strategies to help those students during reading instruction. RECOMMENDED RESOURCES AND ONES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE Working Memory and Learning:...

Shannon and Mary talk with Kelly Butler and Carla Stanford about professional learning that is meaningful.   Kelly Butler worked with the Barksdale Reading Institute to bring about systems change in reading instruction in the state of Mississippi over the last twenty years.   Kelly and Carla share about a free resource they're working on now called Reading Universe, which is a one-stop shop for teachers and interested stakeholders to learn about best practices in teaching...

Shannon and Mary chat with speech therapist Dr. Karen Dudek Brannan about the overlaps between speech, reading, and language.   Dr. Karen helps us understand the challenges facing students with language impairments.    From this episode, teachers can understand the perspective of a speech therapist to better understand speech and language challenges.    After listening, you should walk away with ideas about conversations to have with the speech therapist in your building and an awareness of...

Shannon and Mary discuss the importance of prioritizing handwriting instruction simultaneously with reading and writing instruction in the early grades. Learn why handwriting is essential for overall literacy development and how to include it in your daily instruction. RECOMMENDED RESOURCES AND ONES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE The Importance of Teaching Handwriting by Louise Spear SwerlingWriting by hand may increase brain connectivity more than typing, readings of student brains suggest...

Shannon shares with Mary the steps she follows for analyzing student data.    This Date Your Data process requires multiple steps of looking at test scores, improvement goals, student strengths and weaknesses, and then connecting the data to standards to facilitate data-driven instruction.  This method of data review makes the test score information meaningful to teachers, students, parents, and other stakeholders.   Listen to find out how to Date Your Data to get to know your students and...

Shannon and Mary are joined in by Linda Rhyne in the Reading Teachers Lounge. They share a deep dive of information from the book, The Knowledge Gap by Natalie Wexler. This episode is full of information and strategies to increase your student's knowledge helping them dive deep into comprehension and knowledge building.  Linda Rhyne is a returning guest to the show and shares her expertise in guiding professional discussions to help educators meet their student's literacy goals....

Shannon chats with her favorite literacy guru, Wiley Blevins, about the decisions and methods that go into differentiation.    Shannon picks his brain about some of her reading students.  Also, Wiley shares insights from his coming book about adjustments that teachers can make before or during their lessons to better suit the learning levels of their students.   We always get some much wisdom from Wiley, whether it be from a direct chat, a webinar he hosts, or from a book he's authored.   ...

Shannon and Mary chat with Dr. Karen Gazith about her new book The Power of Effective Reading Instruction.   The conversation flowed through many topics but ultimately what you can gain from our discussion is the gifts we give our readers when we teach with intention.  Listen to this episode to gain fresh ideas for enhancing your own reading instruction. RECOMMENDED RESOURCES AND ONES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE Ask the Right Questions about RTIWait to Fail Model The Power of Effective...

Mary and Shannon chat with Dr. Molly Ness about her new book Read Alouds for All Learners.   Molly shares how teachers should intentionally plan their read alouds, with thought put into the vocabulary instruction, the purpose for reading, the think aloud process, and engagement and extension activities for students after reading. Listen to this episode for TONS of ideas from our guest about how to get the most learning out of your read aloud experiences. RECOMMENDED RESOURCES AND ONES...

Shannon and Mary wrestle with understanding the nature of the comprehension process.  They discuss ideas from the Blueprint for Reading Comprehension and Executive Skills and Comprehension to understand the different cognitive processes and executive functioning required for students to extract and construct meaning from texts. RESOURCES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE the Reading Comprehension Blueprint by Nancy Hennessy *Amazon affiliate linkExecutive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide...

Shannon chats with Lindsay Kemeny about her new book titled 7 Mighty Moves: Research-Backed, Classroom-Tested Strategies to Ensure K-3 Reading Success.     Both Shannon and Lindsay have classroom experience teaching Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade students, so their discussion was filled with details and stories about the best instructional strategies and techniques teachers should use to help their students become fluent readers. RESOURCES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE 7 Mighty...

Shannon and Mary talk about why they love student mistakes.   They share how to make mistakes meaningful in the ways they show insight into students' learning.     They chat about establishing a trusting relationship with students so they feel comfortable showing us mistakes.  Lastly, they discuss ways to provide student feedback without inducing shame.   Learning happens between the lessons, and in this episode, you'll find concrete ideas for what to do and say each day with your students to...

Shannon and Mary meet with Kionna Squires (@DaLiteracyLady) to talk about the challenges facing older struggling readers.    During the discussion, they explain how meeting students where they are IS rigorous and the right thing to do for our readers.  They also share ideas for boosting student engagement and their favorite activities for upper grade reading intervention. RESOURCES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE Texas Center for Learning Disabilities: Effective Reading Interventions for Upper...

Shannon and Mary host a returning guest to the Reading Teachers Lounge @MindfulTeacherRachel, who you heard in Season 5 on the Schwa episode.   In this episode, Shannon, Mary, and Rachel talk about English word histories and how they may inform how a word is spelled.   Check out this discussion to get ideas for how to share word origin stories with your reading students and help students see how important morphology is in addition to sound symbol connections. RESOURCES MENTIONED DURING THE...

Shannon and Mary meet again to begin the 6th season of the podcast.    They recap their summer activities in both professional and personal lives, update the audience on the plans they're making for their reading students this school year, and preview what's coming next in Season 6 of the podcast. RESOURCES MENTIONED DURING THE EPISODE Georgia Department of Education:  Dyslexia InformationGreat E-books about Structured Shared Reading & Writing and other guides Regarding DyslexiaAssessing...

Shannon and Mary bring you a surprise bonus episode for Season 5.   They chat with Dr. Amanda Alexander from Scholastic about statistics about summer reading.   In the episode, they all share tips about how to make the most of the summer reading experience.  Note:  The research statistics cited were compiled by Scholastic in conjunction with Fluent Research.   The findings are based on a nationally representative sample of 1,724 parents and children, including 531 parents of children ages...

Shannon and Mary meet up to review how season 5 of the podcast has gone.    They share some of the things they learned during the season and list some of their favorite episodes and guests.   They also chat about the school year as it winds down, their upcoming summer plans, and what is in store for the podcast in Season 6.    At the end of the episode, they're joined by Kelsey Sorenson from Wife Teacher Mommy to talk about the Educate and Rejuvenate event they're all participating in during...

Shannon and Mary chat with Malia Hollowell (@Playdough2Plato) about her new book, Science of Reading In Action.    They summarize the big ideas within the Science of Reading for listeners and share practical actions teachers and parents can take to ensure they're doing best practices for students that are backed by literacy research.   After listening, you'll understand more about WHAT the SoR is, WHY it is important, and HOW to put it in action, no matter your literacy role. Episode Links...

Shannon and Mary chat with Khadijah Abdullah, a public school teacher in their area,  about how she balances the wide variety of reading abilities in her classroom.    Khadijah shares about her trauma-informed teaching practices and how she uses visual literacy to provide learning scaffolds for her students. Episode Links for Resources mentioned: Teaching With Multiple Modalities10 Visual Literacy StrategiesMedia LiteracyVisual LearningTips for Viewing Images in Picture BooksTrauma...

Shannon and Mary chat with Jamie Sears from Not So Wimpy Teacher about how to get more done as a reading teacher in less time.  Jamie shares practical tips for teachers from her newly published book titled How to Love Teaching Again.    Listeners will walk away with ideas on how to save time in preparing lesson plans, routines for lesson structure, easy grading techniques, and ways to simplify reading groups.  Check out this episode to find out how to make your jobs as reading teachers easier...

Shannon and Mary read over and discuss the Speaking and Listening standards in Reading to develop a deeper understanding of how and why these standards exist and help the students grow in literacy.     They show how the standards develop in the depth of knowledge across the grade levels from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade.   They also share ideas of ways to embed Speaking and Listening standards practice in classroom routines and project-based learning. Episode Links for Resources: Common...

Shannon chats with Stephanie Summers from Pride Reading Program about the topic of helping students build their reading fluency.    They talk about what skills go into a student's reading fluency.     They share ways to work on fluency with readers.     In their chat, they reference ideas from The Megabook of Fluency by Timothy Rasinski. Episode Links for Resources mentioned: What is fluency?Fluency methodsNote from Timothy RaskinskiThe Megabook of Fluency by Timothy Raskinski *Amazon...

Shannon and Mary focus their conversation on how to build students' vocabularies.    They share less effective methods used in the past and how they've evolved their vocabulary instruction to help students the most.   In the chat, they reference ideas from Bringing Words to Life by Isabel Beck.  Episode Links for Resources mentioned: How do we teach the Language Comprehension strand of Scarborough's Reading Rope?Word Building:  20 root words and 14 prefixes= 100,000 words (Dyslexia...

Often Shannon and Mary discuss different types of student assessments. Today we are going to dive a little deeper and discuss how we use data analysis to make meaningful adjustments and decisions to our teaching practices. Shannon brings the perspective of a classroom teacher and Mary shares how she individualizes plans for her private tutoring clients. Episode Links for Resources mentioned: SoR assessment list Reading Rockets:    Assessment In DepthCORE Phonics SurveyWiley Blevins...