This episode explores the idea of teaching students with leveled books at their so-called instructional reading levels. For 70+ years, educators have been told that this was the key to optimum amounts of learning. This podcast challenges that idea.

"Experts" make lots of recommendations about how to teach oral reading or text reading fluency. One of those recommendations is that it is important to "model" oral reading for the students. The research is nearly silent on this issue, so what makes sense?

This episode explores what it meant by the term "science of reading" and it distinguishes that idea from a "science of reading instruction." The issue here has to do with what kind of evidence should be used to determine how best to teach reading.

This episode explores the effectiveness of Orton-Gillingham approaches to the teaching of phonics as well as which method is best for facilitating growth in decoding -- teaching students connect letters to sounds or sounds to letters.

This podcast explores the pluses and minuses of benchmark reading testing, including considerations of test frequency, time of day the tests are administered and who proctors the tests.

Many kids only want to read graphic novels. Is that a problem? This podcast explores the pluses and minuses of graphic novels when it comes to learning to read. It includes practical suggestions for parents and teachers.

There is a long history in reading education of promoting small group instruction. This podcast explores what the research has to say about the benefits -- or lack thereof -- of small group teaching and whether it is such a good idea afterall.

This podcast explains why summer reading practice is so important and provides 13 recommendations for ways to encourage children to read when the schools are closed.

Children on the autism spectrum (ASD) present some interesting challenges when it comes to reading instruction. Part 1 of this series considered the difficulties that these children may have with decoding -- despite the fact that there are a surprising number who have hyperlexia, especially good decoding ability. However, most of these students struggle more with comprehension than decoding and this podcast explores what their comprehension problems tend to be and how they might be addressed.

More and more kids are diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum and this challenge has important consequences for learning to read. This podcast explores the implications this has for teaching reading -- both to kids on the spectrum and to everyone else.