Melissa & Lori Love Literacy ® | Science of Reading for Teachers

Researcher Heidi Anne Mesmer joins the podcast to discuss the research on decodable text and dos and don'ts for classroom practice. Thinking about decodability as a meter from most to least decodable to the reader is important. A child who reads a text by sounding out and decoding words will experience a milestone of childhood: the feeling of reading. This also supports orthographic mapping.

Resources

• Decodable Text: A Review of What We Know, Heidi Anne Mesmer 
• TextProject.org 
• Key Knowledge to Support Phonological Awareness and Phonics Instruction, Piasta and Hudson 
• Choosing and Using Decodable Texts, Wiley Blevins 
• Reading Above the Fray, Julia Lindsey 

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Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum. 

Looking for more literacy support and resources? Explore all of our podcast episodes, free listening guides, and classroom tools at literacypodcast.com.

Interested in bringing Melissa & Lori Love Literacy to your school or event? Email us at [email protected].

DJ Bolger, a neuroscientist and associate professor at the University of Maryland College Park, joins the podcast today. DJ helps us understand the dyslexia brain a bit better, shares how dyslexia is so much more than “one” thing, and provides helpful analogies and ideas for application. He defines dyslexia, discussing the brain, and making connections to reading science.  

Resources

• International Dyslexia Association Dyslexia Awareness Month social media resources and more

Connect with us!

• Facebook and join our Facebook Group 
• Twitter 
• Instagram 

Visit our website to subscribe to stay connected with Melissa and Lori! 

Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum. 

Looking for more literacy support and resources? Explore all of our podcast episodes, free listening guides, and classroom tools at literacypodcast.com.

Interested in bringing Melissa & Lori Love Literacy to your school or event? Email us at [email protected].

Trauma impacts every facet of our being. Today we’ll hear from educator and author, Dr. Melissa Sadin. As part of our Dyslexia Awareness month series, Dr. Sadin will share her personal story about how trauma and reading affected her family. Trauma can get in the way of the brain learning to read but we can help our students through intentional instructional practices. 

Resources

• These resources from the International Dyslexia Association are helpful to spread the word on social media about October as Dyslexia Awareness Month! 
• Developmental Trauma Disorder 
• ACES STUDY​​
• The Trauma Foundation 
• Carol Dweck Growth Mindset  
• Bessel van der Kolk, MD 
• The Attachment and Trauma Network
• TNTP’s The Opportunity Myth

Looking for more literacy support and resources? Explore all of our podcast episodes, free listening guides, and classroom tools at literacypodcast.com.

Interested in bringing Melissa & Lori Love Literacy to your school or event? Email us at [email protected].

In celebration of Emily Hanford's new documentary series, Sold a Story, listen again to Emily Hanford here!  

Today Emily Hanford joins Melissa and Lori to define the Science of Reading, addressing the current misinterpretation of the term and what it really means. She shares thoughts on teacher prep programs and where teachers get knowledge about what or how to teach, contemplates why teacher prep programs are not preparing teachers to teach kids how to read, and how curriculum plays a role in helping teachers who do not know the science of reading.

Resources

• Sold a Story by American Public Media

Connect with us

• Facebook and join our Facebook Group 
• Twitter 
• Instagram 

Visit our website and stay connected with Melissa and Lori!

Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum. 

Looking for more literacy support and resources? Explore all of our podcast episodes, free listening guides, and classroom tools at literacypodcast.com.

Interested in bringing Melissa & Lori Love Literacy to your school or event? Email us at [email protected].

As part of our Dyslexia Awareness Month series, listen again to Dr. Steven Dykstra discuss the devastating effects on students who have not received the instruction they need to be successful readers. 
 
April 1, 2022
The axis of rating trauma is frequent and repetitive. Over time, the chronic trauma wears down kids who can’t read. This has devastating effects. In our official 100th episode, Dr. Steven Dyskstra discusses Trauma and Reading. He explains the connection between not being taught to read using evidence-based practices and the subsequent, unnecessary trauma this causes in children’s lives. Stepping away from science-based approaches creates issues for kids that don’t need to be there. This is a pervasive problem happening everywhere. 

Dr. Steven Dykstra is a psychologist, advocate, and troublemaker in the reading world.  He has worked with the most severely traumatized and mentally ill children for more than 25 years. His passion for reading comes from the recognition that the thousands of children he has served often pay the highest price for our failures and mistakes. 

Looking for more literacy support and resources? Explore all of our podcast episodes, free listening guides, and classroom tools at literacypodcast.com.

Interested in bringing Melissa & Lori Love Literacy to your school or event? Email us at [email protected].

In this episode, we talk with Sydney Bassard, a clinical speech language pathologist, also known as The Listening SLP. Inspired by her brother’s experience with dyslexia, she became a speech language pathologist and began advocating within her community so educators and parents can be informed and actualize reading science into practice. Sydney defines the role of the speech language pathologist in the community and in the school to help us better connect language and literacy. 

Resources

• The Listening SLP 
• Developmental Speech Sound Milestones
• These resources from the International Dyslexia Association are helpful to spread the word on social media about October as Dyslexia Awareness Month! 

Connect with us

• Facebook and join our Facebook Group 
• Twitter 
• Instagram 

Visit our website and stay connected with Melissa and Lori!

Helping teachers learn about science of reading, knowledge building, and high quality curriculum. 

Looking for more literacy support and resources? Explore all of our podcast episodes, free listening guides, and classroom tools at literacypodcast.com.

Interested in bringing Melissa & Lori Love Literacy to your school or event? Email us at [email protected].

In this episode, we talk with former balanced literacy teacher and parent, Missy Purcell. She authored a blog post titled Dear Balanced Literacy Teacher.

Missy writes, “According to Nancy Young’s ladder of reading, roughly 10-15% of kids can figure out reading out with this type of instruction, but my child, who would later be diagnosed with dyslexia, would never be able to become a proficient reader with any version of balanced literacy. He, according to Young, like 85% of students, benefit from or need systematic explicit instruction that follows a scope and sequence with fidelity to become proficient readers and writers.”

We want to normalize the idea that most kids CAN learn how to read with structured literacy instruction. 

Resources

• Dear Balanced Literacy Teacher 
• Looking for Heroes: One Boy, One Year, 100 Letters 2nd Edition
• These resources from the International Dyslexia Association are helpful to spread the word on social media about October as Dyslexia Awareness Month! 

Connect with us

• Facebook 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. 

Looking for more literacy support and resources? Explore all of our podcast episodes, free listening guides, and classroom tools at literacypodcast.com.

Interested in bringing Melissa & Lori Love Literacy to your school or event? Email us at [email protected].

As part of our Dyslexia Awareness Month series, listen to a previous episode with parent and advocate Brett Tingley. 

March 25, 2022
Brett Tingley shares how to harness parent energy and expertise to address the legal and moral responsibility of school districts to teach children how to read using science. Our Dyslexic Children tells the story of a group of parents who took on the system, and won. The nonprofit group shares a Strategic Roadmap that’s a practical and actionable guide for educators and parents looking to improve reading instruction in their communities.  

Looking for more literacy support and resources? Explore all of our podcast episodes, free listening guides, and classroom tools at literacypodcast.com.

Interested in bringing Melissa & Lori Love Literacy to your school or event? Email us at [email protected].

As part of our Dyslexia Awareness Month series, listen to a previous episode with parent and advocate Katie Hickerson. 

September 24, 2021
“I just thought kids learned how to read… and my daughter didn’t. She could identify 4 letters by the end of kindergarten .” Katie Hickerson's daughter, Cora, went from a joyous little one to a child with lots of big feelings after starting school, saying she felt stupid.

Katie pulled Cora out of school to be homeschooled - providing structured literacy instruction alongside rigorous tutoring through the International Dyslexia Association. In less than two years, Cora went from meeting a 1% reading benchmark to 92% and was back to herself - full of joy, laughter, and confidence. 

How can parents (and educators) support the reading science movement? Listen and learn!

Looking for more literacy support and resources? Explore all of our podcast episodes, free listening guides, and classroom tools at literacypodcast.com.

Interested in bringing Melissa & Lori Love Literacy to your school or event? Email us at [email protected].

As part of our Dyslexia Awareness Month series, listen to a previous episode with parent and advocate Liz Hembling. 

November 24, 2020
Liz Hembling's daughter, Mia, attended a public elementary school. Liz noticed early on that she struggled terribly learning to read. In second grade, the school placed Mia in a remedial reading group, without communicating this to Liz. When Liz expressed her concerns, she was repeatedly assured that Mia was “on grade level” and “fine.” But... she wasn’t fine.  Liz knew there was something wrong.

This sent Liz on a quest to understand what's happening in the public school system. How could she create change to ensure all kids could access quality reading instruction and services? Liz joined Decoding Dyslexia Maryland and tirelessly advocates for students and families.

Looking for more literacy support and resources? Explore all of our podcast episodes, free listening guides, and classroom tools at literacypodcast.com.

Interested in bringing Melissa & Lori Love Literacy to your school or event? Email us at [email protected].