June 20, 2026

8.10 Season Finale: Beyond Decoding

53 minutes

Shannon and Mary record their Season 8 finale, catching up on what they've been doing during the school year. They've both been busy with balancing personal and professional responsibilities, with work hours increasing for Shannon in tutoring and for Mary in advocacy work and supporting parents in IEP meetings. In their tutoring practices, they're both advancing beyond decoding work with many of their students, and during the discussion, they both realized they had adopted sentence-composing activities, inspired by 8.8's guest, Sara Lee. During the discussion, they detail how their students use literature-based model sentences and scaffolded imitation to build sentence skills, comprehension, and vocabulary. Shannon describes how she adds language support using English Linking Blocks and word lists. The discussion then highlights their excitement about UFLI's upcoming structured morphology curriculum, Word Origins (adapted from Australia). In the episode chat, they also touch on the AMIRA screener, Mary's recent SWI professional learning through Word Torque, and how they're both supporting students' math knowledge and skills in their tutoring. Listen in to catch up with these reading teachers and find out how their literacy instruction continues to evolve.

00:38 Life as Busy Parents
02:30 Tutoring and Advocacy Load
04:29 Discovering Sentence Composing
07:37 Harry Potter Hook
09:17 Linking Blocks Breakthrough
13:18 From Sentences to Writing
19:43 Structured Morphology Word Origins
22:58 Structured Morphology Wins
23:48 Curriculum Fidelity First
27:06 Word Origins Details
28:41 Australia Connections
31:17 Getting It Into Schools
32:15 Georgia Reading Screening
37:59 Math Fluency Intervention
40:22 Subitizing And Word Problems
47:12 Wrap Up Season Notes