This is the Reading Teachers Lounge where listeners can eavesdrop on professional conversations between elementary reading teachers. We are passionate about literacy and strive to find strategies to reach all learners. Shannon and Mary are neighbors who realized that they were “literacy soul sisters” at a dinner in their Atlanta neighborhood. Once they started chatting about reading they haven’t really stopped. Come join the conversation.
Shannon and Mary chat with critically acclaimed author and experienced actress & advocate Colette Hiller about ways to make word learning innovative and fun. Colette is releasing a new book titled Colossal Words for Kids, which combines educational poetry with vibrant illustrations to teach new words and related content knowledge. The book is delightful and so is Colette. Listen to this episode to gain creative ideas about how to help get students excited about word learning and how to help make the vocabulary stick in the students' minds.
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Shannon and Mary chat about how to best support learners with working memory challenges. This is a companion episode to a deep dive learning topic we went through with our Patreon community about Working Memory. Listeners to this episode will walk away with increased awareness about which students may have working memory challenges AND strategies to help those students during reading instruction.
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Shannon and Mary talk with Kelly Butler and Carla Stanford about professional learning that is meaningful. Kelly Butler worked with the Barksdale Reading Institute to bring about systems change in reading instruction in the state of Mississippi over the last twenty years. Kelly and Carla share about a free resource they're working on now called Reading Universe, which is a one-stop shop for teachers and interested stakeholders to learn about best practices in teaching reading.
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Shannon and Mary chat with speech therapist Dr. Karen Dudek Brannan about the overlaps between speech, reading, and language. Dr. Karen helps us understand the challenges facing students with language impairments. From this episode, teachers can understand the perspective of a speech therapist to better understand speech and language challenges. After listening, you should walk away with ideas about conversations to have with the speech therapist in your building and an awareness of language challenges your students may face within your curriculum.
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Shannon and Mary discuss the importance of prioritizing handwriting instruction simultaneously with reading and writing instruction in the early grades. Learn why handwriting is essential for overall literacy development and how to include it in your daily instruction.
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Shannon shares with Mary the steps she follows for analyzing student data. This Date Your Data process requires multiple steps of looking at test scores, improvement goals, student strengths and weaknesses, and then connecting the data to standards to facilitate data-driven instruction. This method of data review makes the test score information meaningful to teachers, students, parents, and other stakeholders. Listen to find out how to Date Your Data to get to know your students and their learning better.
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Shannon and Mary are joined in by Linda Rhyne in the Reading Teachers Lounge. They share a deep dive of information from the book, The Knowledge Gap by Natalie Wexler. This episode is full of information and strategies to increase your student's knowledge helping them dive deep into comprehension and knowledge building. Linda Rhyne is a returning guest to the show and shares her expertise in guiding professional discussions to help educators meet their student's literacy goals.
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Shannon chats with her favorite literacy guru, Wiley Blevins, about the decisions and methods that go into differentiation. Shannon picks his brain about some of her reading students. Also, Wiley shares insights from his coming book about adjustments that teachers can make before or during their lessons to better suit the learning levels of their students. We always get some much wisdom from Wiley, whether it be from a direct chat, a webinar he hosts, or from a book he's authored. Listen to this entire episode to get inspired about ways you can best meet your students' needs.
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Shannon and Mary chat with Dr. Karen Gazith about her new book The Power of Effective Reading Instruction. The conversation flowed through many topics but ultimately what you can gain from our discussion is the gifts we give our readers when we teach with intention. Listen to this episode to gain fresh ideas for enhancing your own reading instruction.
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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.
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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.
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