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 MENTIONED DU...
Dec 08, 2023•55 min•Season 6Ep. 7
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 link Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide for...
Nov 24, 2023•46 min•Season 6Ep. 6
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 Moves: Re...
Nov 10, 2023•57 min•Season 6Ep. 5
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 promote a g...
Oct 19, 2023•52 min•Season 6Ep. 4
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 Elementa...
Oct 05, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Season 6Ep. 3
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 EPISODE O...
Sep 21, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 6Ep. 2
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 Information Great E-books about Structured Shared Reading & Writing and other guides Regarding Dyslexia Assessing Readi...
Sep 07, 2023•38 min•Season 6Ep. 1
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 0–5; 1,193 par...
Jun 15, 2023•36 min0
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 June 2023. ...
May 18, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Season 5Ep. 18
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 for Resour...
May 04, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 17
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 Modalities 10 Visual Literacy Strategies Media Literacy Visual Learning Tips for Viewing Images in Picture Books Trauma Informed Tea...
Apr 20, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 5Ep. 16
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 and mor...
Apr 06, 2023•56 min•Season 5Ep. 15
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 Core Standards ...
Mar 23, 2023•55 min•Season 5Ep. 14
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 methods Note from Timothy Raskinski The Megabook of Fluency by Timothy Raskinski *Amazon affiliate link* Re...
Mar 11, 2023•48 min•Season 5Ep. 13
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 Associates) Academi...
Feb 24, 2023•55 min•Season 5Ep. 12
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 Depth CORE Phonics Survey Wiley Blevins Comprehensive ...
Feb 10, 2023•42 min•Season 5Ep. 11
Shannon and Mary 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. Episode Links for Resources mentioned: Decodable Texts Guide UFLI A tweet with a graphic that says "De...
Jan 27, 2023•57 min•Season 5Ep. 10
Shannon and Mary chat with Dr. Janet Mort, who has fifty years of experience in the field of education and reading. We discuss the Simple View of Reading and how that affected reading instruction in the 1980s and 1990s. Dr. Mort then shares how the research following the Simple View of Reading has shifted and become more defined. This discussion provides context to reading research over the last few decades and helps reading teachers understand how Science of Reading discoveries impact classroom...
Jan 13, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 5Ep. 9
Shannon and Mary 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, we go into greater detail about best practices to do in the classrooms to he...
Dec 23, 2022•58 min•Season 5Ep. 8
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 fe...
Dec 09, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Season 5Ep. 7
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 th...
Nov 25, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Season 5Ep. 6
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. Episode Resources: The Commonsense Guide to Your Classroom Library: Building a Collection that Inspires, Engages, and Challenges Readers by Donalyn Miller &...
Nov 11, 2022•33 min•Season 5Ep. 5
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. Episode Resources: Rachel's book Schwa in 1st Grade on Amazon Uncovering the Lo...
Oct 27, 2022•39 min•Season 5Ep. 4
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. Episode Resources: our episode about favorite F...
Oct 13, 2022•47 min•Season 5Ep. 3
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 for their studen...
Sep 29, 2022•1 hr 23 min•Season 5Ep. 2
Shannon and Mary meet up after the summer hiatus to chat about going back to school. They catch up on their personal activities from the summer and then share their instructional plans for the new school year in 2022-2023. Episode Resources: Shannon's Phonics Units Decodable readers from Heggerty Decodable readers from High Noon Decodable readers from Geodes Decodable readers from Flyleaf Morpheme Magic from Deb Glaser Mary's updated website Van Cleave vocabulary resources our Patreon site and d...
Sep 15, 2022•50 min•Season 5Ep. 1
Shannon and Mary catch up on their teaching activities and personal lives during the past school year. They share highlights from the past season and what is coming next in Season 5 and the 2022-2023 school year. Episode Resources: Shannon's Phonics Units Decodable readers from Heggerty Decodable readers from High Noon Decodable readers from Geodes Decodable readers from Flyleaf Morpheme Magic from Deb Glaser our Morphology episode our Wiley Blevins Scope and Sequence episode our Nancy Young Dif...
Jun 30, 2022•46 min•Season 4Ep. 15
Shannon and Mary share some new understandings they've discovered about the differences between long and short vowels. They chat about how they'll modify some phonics activities for students after discovering these new understandings. Episode Resources: The ABC's and All Their Tricks by Margaret M. Bishop (*Amazon affiliate link) our Season 1 episode about Short Vowels our Season 1 episode about Long Vowels our Season 4 episode about Sound Walls Shannon's Long and Short Vowel Soccer game Shannon...
Jun 23, 2022•13 min•Season 4Ep. 14
Shannon and Mary chat with Nancy Young, the creator of the Ladder of Reading & Writing, about differentiated instruction for readers at different levels. [Note: Our podcast has explicit permission from Nancy Young to use her Ladder infographic image and information with our audience.] In this episode we discuss the equitable need for differentiation, in order to "offer children what they need based on where they are." Strategies, examples, and activities are shared for teachers to modify the...
Jun 16, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Season 4Ep. 13
Shannon chats with Sarah Rich, CEO of Just Right Reader, about her company that provides decodable readers to students, families, teachers, and schools. Sarah and Shannon talk about how decodable texts are important for the right reading practice for students. Sarah provides details about their mission to make reading fun and for students to learn to read with engaging decodables that are representative of students in America's schools. Episode Resources: Decodable Book Collection from Just Righ...
Jun 02, 2022•23 min•Season 4Ep. 12
