Season 5 Episodes
Featured
Reading teachers 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.
Reading teachers chat about how to put the Science of Reading into 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.
Reading specialists chat with a third-grade teacher about how she balances the wide variety of reading abilities in her classroom. The teacher shares about her trauma-informed teaching practices and how she uses visual literacy to provide learning scaffolds for her students.
Reading teachers 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 and more enjoyable!
Literacy teachers 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.
Reading teachers 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.
Reading teachers chat about best activities to build students' vocabularies. They share how their vocabulary instruction has evolved over the years to help students the most. In the chat, they reference ideas form Bringing Words to Life by Isabel Beck.
Reading teachers talk about different types of student assessments and how to use data analysis to make the assessment data meaningful. This analysis will help teachers make data-driven adjustments and decisions in reading instruction.
Reading teachers chat with Emily Gibbons from the Literacy Nest about decodable texts. This discussion provides information about how decodables are similar and different to trade books and leveled texts. In this episode, teachers will find out how and when to use decodable texts in reading instruction. Listeners will also learn the best sources for high quality decodable books and short texts.
Reading teachers chat about the Simple View of Reading and how that affected reading instruction in the 1980s and 1990s. Then they discuss how the research following the Simple View of Reading has shifted and become more defined. This conversation provides context to reading research over the last few decades and helps reading teachers understand how Science of Reading discoveries impact classroom instruction.
Reading teachers chat with Ann Geiger from The Measured Mom about how readers orthographically stores words in their reading brains. This episode follows our overview of the reading brain, where we talked about the reader's journey to whole word recognition and how reading teachers can help their readers bolt on the orthography to what students already know in spoken language and language comprehension. In this episode, teachers will learn about best practices to do in the classrooms to help their students gain this meaningful letter sequence storage.
Shannon and Mary chat with Dr. Marnie Ginsberg from Reading Simplified about what happens in the brain during reading. We talk about the reader's journey to whole word recognition and how reading teachers can help their readers bolt on the orthography to what students already know in spoken language and language comprehension. Listeners will learn how to build a strong foundation for reading and how to help their students build flexible decoding strategies. Teachers will also hear examples of feedback to provide to readers in order to promote orthographic mapping. Check out this episode to learn all about how the brain learns to read.
Shannon and Mary ask Linda Rhyne to join them for a live Reading Teachers discussion about how to find balance in our reading instruction. Teachers are asked to follow various curriculum programs, teach the grade level standards, differentiate for their students' needs, and utilize their own expertise & experience. How can teachers blend all this together into cohesive literacy instruction that makes sense to students and themselves and balance what they're asked to do with what they know their students need to be successful in reading? All these points are brought up in the chat, and Linda shares some tips for how teachers can be critical consumers and advocates for their students in their individual school buildings. We hope this chat inspires you to think critically about your own teaching practice and instructional decisions.
Shannon and Mary chat with Donalyn Miller & Colby Sharp about their recently published Common Sense Guide to Your Classroom Library. The reading teachers discuss how to set up and use the library to maximize its impact with kids. This conversation provides the WHY behind decision making and instructional use of the classroom library.
Shannon and Mary chat with Mindful Teacher Rachel about the Schwa vowel sound and how to teach it to students. She shares great stories from her classroom about teaching reading and all about her newly published book that can be used to introduce the Schwa to readers. You'll want to listen in on this chat between reading teachers to get strategies and resources for working on the Schwa with your own reading students.
Shannon and Mary chat about their favorite free and low cost literacy resources to use in reading lessons and tutoring sessions. They share links to: complete phonics curriculum resources that include scope and sequences, decodable texts, vocabulary lists and activities, phonics and phonemic awareness activities, and strategies for teaching comprehension. Check out the links in the show notes to find resources to use with your own reading students.
Mary and Shannon chat with Stephaney Jones-Vo about how to best support the reading needs of English Language Learners. Stephaney describes the differences in needs of ESOL students at various levels and provides easy ideas for differentiation and scaffolding for students at different levels. Stephaney shares how to understand the language load of class assignments and assessments, and this lens will help teachers view their own learning assignments in a fresh and supportive way.
Reading teachers chat about their podcast discussions and how the school year has gone. 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 Conference.