Empowering Educators: Practical Wisdom From Melissa and Lori

Sara
So today is a first on the Stellar Teacher Podcast. And that’s because we have two guests on the show today.

Sara
Now, if you aren’t already familiar with Melissa and Lori, hosts of the Melissa and Lori Love Literacy Podcast, then you are going to absolutely love them after today’s episode.

Sara
They have a podcast that is for educators who are interested in the science of reading for students of all ages. And Melissa is a national board certified teacher who taught middle and high school ELA for nearly 15 years in New Orleans and Baltimore. And Lori is an energetic former elementary and high school teacher who taught for more than a decade in Baltimore, Maryland.

Sara
And they have a wealth of knowledge. And they are so generous with what they share with you guys today. And in our conversation, we talk about all things literacy, we cover things like how much time should you spend on fluency? What’s the difference between tier one, tier two, and tier three vocabulary words? And should we really be teaching reading comprehension strategies in isolation? I took away a lot of helpful nuggets from our conversation. And I hope you do as well. So let’s jump into the show.

Sara
Hi, Melissa, and Lori. I am so excited to have you on the podcast today.

Melissa
We’re excited to be here on the other side of this.

Lori
Yeah. Thank you for having us, Sara. We can’t wait.

Sara
Absolutely. So you guys are first my first dual guests. I’ve never had two guests before. So this is going to be a fun conversation.

Sara
But like Melissa said, you guys are on kind of the other side of the podcast experience because you guys are the hosts of the wildly popular podcast, Melissa and Lori Love Literacy. So before we really jump into our conversation, can we just get a little bit of a backstory? How did you guys really become literacy fanatics that then turned into podcast hosts?

Lori
Yeah, well, I’ll start. So Melissa and I were teachers for a very long time, we were working in Baltimore City Public Schools and leadership in their central office, their ELA office, and we were spending our time in classrooms coaching and doing you know, bottle lessons and co teaching and all that good stuff you do when you coach PLC is etc.

Lori
And we didn’t really have a curriculum, and it was, you know, homegrown curriculum, but it was very piecemeal. And if you’re listening, you’re probably like, oh, my gosh, I totally get that. Like it was you went over to this cabinet to get the writing stuff. And then you went over to that cabinet to get the reading stuff. And then you went over to this to get your progress monitoring stuff. And it was completely disconnected from each other.

Lori
And so at some point in time, we transitioned to using a foundational skills program. And we got professional development in that. And I kept thinking, Did I miss this in college? Maybe I missed this, is this something like did I completely just miss when we learned about this?

Lori
Then we eventually went on to adopt Wit and Wisdom ELA, which is a high quality, you know, core curriculum that encourages Knowledge Building, lots of writing, grade level text, etc, all that good stuff. And Melissa and I got paired to work together. And we were having all of these conversations again, like, did we did we miss this? Because we went we both have our reading specialist degrees. Like what happened?

Lori
And we were having a lot of these conversations with each other. And so I said to her, Hey, we should start a podcast It was when podcasting was kind of becoming cooler, I guess, or coming on to the circuit. She was like, Well, I happen to them some equipment in my basement. I was like, Cool. It’ll be over on Thursday. And we’ll just do this, like, let’s just do it. So then, Melissa, I’ll hand it to you from there.

Melissa
Yeah, I mean, and Lori and I when at that same time, we were just like, we were learning a lot together. We were reading articles we were sharing with each other and it was like, Well, you know, we could record some of this discussion that we’re doing and we weren’t sure at all if anyone would listen at first but you know, it’s like well can’t hurt right and so gave us a way to kind of work through some of our own learning by on our own.

Melissa
But then we started asking guests to come on and you know, we started small with some people we knew from the district and it was that we still do that to this day of like we want to hear from teachers in the classroom and learn from them just as much as experts. But I will say we did get a little excited. And we started asking some, like, big names in the, you know, Tim Shanahan, Natalie Wexler, Emily Hanford, and they said yes, and we were like, Okay, let’s learn from them, too. This is great. Like, let’s keep going. And here we are almost at 200 episodes close close to it.

Lori
And it’s five years it’s been I’ve usually just April. So Sara, I’m not sure when you’re releasing this. But April, this is our five month anniversary, so.

Sara
It’ll be sometime in April. So this is definitely like Happy anniversary to you guys. Okay, first of all, I love Melissa that you just happen to have podcast equipment in their basement. Like, I definitely did not have podcasts in my house when I thought to do this.

Melissa
Yeah, just just recording equipment, and it was not mine.

Sara
Well, I also love that you guys were like, You know what, let’s just do this, like without necessarily a plan, but you wanted to share your learning with other teachers. And I, I can so relate to just the whole like, did I learn this in college? I feel like since being even out of the classroom, I have learned so much about effective literacy practices. And I’m like, Why did I not know any of this until now?

Lori
For sure, yeah. And I just feel like there’s so much to read and think about and explore every single day. Like, there’s so much amazing stuff happening. Yeah, new research, just so fun.

Sara
I always tell the teachers in my audience that we really have one of the best professions ever, because of all of the learning, right? Like we never get to the end, there’s always more to learn, always ways that we can improve, always the ways that we can grow, which is just, I think, really exciting as a professional.

Sara
So in addition to being really awesome podcast hosts, you guys recently have become published authors. And your very first book, The Literacy 50: Real World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night, is about to be released at the beginning of June. So first of all, congratulations. That’s a huge accomplishment. I’m really curious, you know, what is it that compelled you to write this book? And why did you decide to go specifically with like a q&a handbook format?

Melissa
Yeah, I’ll start off. So the q&a handbook was kind of born out of two things. One, we got so we still get so many questions from people who listen, which makes so much sense. So they listened to us. And then they have more questions just like we do, which is why we continue podcasting.

Melissa
So we had all these questions from emails for our Facebook group, you know, all over, you know, we were spending a lot of time sometimes of really long time answering those questions. Or, like, there’s gotta be a better way for us to get this information out there than responding to individual emails. And and I’m sure other people have questions that aren’t even reaching out to us, right, because I have questions when I listen to podcasts. And I don’t email those people. So I know there are people who have more questions.

Melissa
So that was one reason we wanted to answer those questions. And so that was kind of where the question answer came from. And then also, we just wanted to have some time to reflect back on, like, we just said, nearly 200 episodes of learning from everyone. We never really stepped back to look like, what did we learn from all those guests? Like we have it in our brains, but we didn’t really step back to think, you know, that’s, that’s a lot of synthesizing of information from all those experts, teachers, leaders that we talked to.

Melissa
So he really wanted to kind of take some of the big things we learned. And you know, if people are new to the podcast, going back to listen to 200 episodes is really daunting. So this is a really nice place to start. We point people to specific podcasts they can listen to if they want to learn more, but it just gave them a really brief way to get started on some of the big questions that they might have.

Sara
That’s awesome. Was it hard to limit it to just 50 questions?

Lori
Oh yeah. While we were writing, I kept saying to Melissa, Oh, I already have the next 50 like, you know, and she was like, just focus on these right now.

Sara
Sounds like there’s gonna be a sequel at some point.

Lori
Maybe I know. I mean, can you 100, 150, 1,000 I mean, we so these the series that we’re in, which is the science of reading and practice, as scholastic series, every book is 160 pages start to finish. So that’s why we limited it to 50. If we had had 300 plus pages, we would have 100.

Lori
But we could barely fit what we wanted to into 160 pages. And big shout out to our editor at Scholastic, right, he was, I mean, he’s just a joy to work with and just made us feel so confident in what we were writing and just in the nicest, just kindest, kindest way.

Sara
That’s awesome. I’m sure that made for just a really good experience. So I know that we’re going to talk a little bit about some of the questions here and give our listeners a preview.

Sara
But before we do that, I would love to know you know, when you guys were really in the classroom or just kind of digging into the science of reading what is a literacy question that really kept you up at night that you’re like, oh my gosh, I need to figure this out.

Melissa
We might actually touch on this one a little bit today. But mine was really this it was If I was all about mastery, you know, that was what I was taught to do was like find those standards. And then you have a checklist with all your students, and you test them until they master it. And I was like, started in high school. And then I went to middle school, mostly sixth grade.

Melissa
And I just like always had, I couldn’t understand it was like, how are they going to master finding the main idea? Because just because they can do it with this one text, doesn’t mean they’re going to do it over here. And I saw that play out on, you know, state tests and other other assessments like that, like, like, Well, they did it over here, I checked off the box, because they did it in my class, but then they didn’t do it over here, or sometimes the opposite.

Melissa
Sometimes they didn’t do it in my class, but then they did it on the test, you know, it was like, it didn’t always match up. And so I think I always had that question of like, there’s gotta be more to, especially reading comprehension than just checking off this box that they did a standard. Right. But that was, that was the thing that drove me nuts. And I didn’t know enough to know what should be happening. But that never sat right with me.

Sara
I think a lot of teachers can relate to that I for sure, can I was very much like the data driven Teacher Oh, yeah. Like, you know, I want all the assessments, all the data, and also check off all the boxes. And I know a lot of teachers have that same question. So I think we will hopefully touch on that a little bit.

Melissa
Which does work for some things.

Lori
Well, that’s what I was gonna say, I agree with you, Melissa. That definitely kept me up at night. But then, to your point, it’s like chasing your tail. Because comprehension is complex. And it’s not as simple as checking a box that I found the main idea, and now I can forever find the main idea.

Lori
I think that we do address that in the book. I think we might talk about that today, too. But for me, in particular, it was that plus this idea of so like what you said, and then to add on that to the strategy instruction in isolation.

Lori
I’ve talked about it on our podcast before, I remember teaching second grade and just having, you know, a main idea Sunday bulletin board up, and that was we focused on main idea for two weeks. And then after that, we were supposed to all be able to do make, find the main idea for the forever and ever, and it just doesn’t work that way. And I never felt right to me, but I could never really place what to do instead.

Lori
And so I feel like after reading and learning more, and after seeing truly I think that’s why, you know, we we continue to podcast and the way that we do like seeing high quality materials, it did help me see what it should have been, or could have been. And another so like a solution to that problem that kept me up at night.

Sara
Those questions definitely are things that I know, I wondered, I know lots of my listeners have the same wonderings as well. So I’m excited not only that some of those answers are included in your book, but answers to other questions as well.

Sara
So we’re gonna preview four questions that you guys have in your book, and you are so gracious to share the answers with my listeners so they can kind of get a taste for what is included in your book. So let’s start with how much time should I spend on fluency? And what should my schedule look like?

Melissa
Yeah, so I’ll start us off. But I will say before I answer the question for each of these, Sara, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna give a brief like answer, which is what we do in the book with some research or some advice from our experts that we had on the podcast. And then I’m gonna pass it to Lori, who’s gonna give more practical tips, because that’s what we have in the book

Sara
I love it. And I was gonna say, I know my audience loves both hearing the research and the practical tips. So this is gonna be perfect.

Melissa
So did it like that in the book. And we’ll do that today. Awesome. So the question was, how much time should you spend on fluency? What should your schedule look like? And so there’s no one right answer here. So we’ll talk a little bit about what was recommended, which is basically it should be quick.

Melissa
So the time for fluency should happen every day. And I will say this is definitely elementary. I would still say middle school, I was a middle school teacher, yes, middle school still needs this practice every day. And even in high school, especially if students aren’t reading at grade level, which we know a lot of our high schoolers are not.

Melissa
So this practice should happen everyday. But it’s not a lot of time. So Meredith Lubin and Sue Pimentel, they recommended about 15 to 20 minutes per day using grade level texts. Also, we had someone on who talked about, you know, this could be not just at one time during the day, but spread out throughout the day.

Melissa
So even practicing during things like reading the directions for whatever it is doesn’t matter. Something else during the day, and have them do a choral read, right? That’s another just really small way where you can drop fluency in throughout the day. All of it should be quick, quick ways to kind of teach or model quick ways for them to practice and quick ways for you to give feedback. So thinking about that every day.

Melissa
I think the best way for us to think about this is throughout a week, because you actually do want to do different things as students are building their fluency with a certain text. You don’t want to do the same thing every day.

Melissa
Tim Brzezinski gave a really great example on our podcast I’ll share that one. It was with a middle school class, and they were learning about great American poets. This is a great opportunity for students to learn more about the different poets or the poetry of that time period.

Melissa
So his recommendation was something along the lines of, you know, on a Monday or Tuesday, you give students maybe like five different poems you spread out for the students they have, they each have a different poem. On Monday, you might read aloud the poems if they’re short, like if they’re Emily Dickinson poems, you could read aloud all of the poems, if it’s longer, maybe you don’t have as many poems, or maybe you do something else to so they hear it, but you want them to hear the fluent reading. So this could be some choral reading or echo reading.

Melissa
And then you give them a little time to maybe practice it on their own. Wednesday and Thursday, you might do some more like partner reading or in groups giving them that more of that practice. But that also could give you some time to go around and give them some feedback as well, you know, listening in giving them the feedback.

Melissa
And then the important thing he talked about was, I’m saying Friday, it doesn’t have to be Monday through Friday, whatever works for your schedule, but at the end, they perform it. And that is really a key, like, it doesn’t have to happen every time. But it gives them that authentic way to be able to like what what was all that practice for you? It was for this, it was I’m gonna present it now, whether it’s to a small group or to, you know, an audience that’s invited into the class, whatever it might be, it gives them a way to do that.

Melissa
So it’s just those quick practices every day that lead up to that performance at the end. And the great thing about this one, is it like connected to what they were learning about. So it also deepens their knowledge, too.

Sara
I love that. And I just I know, Lori, you’ve got some obviously practical tips. But Melissa, I love that you pointed out that fluency does not have to happen at the same time every day, and it can be spread out. I think so often, we sometimes limit how we view our schedule, and we think, Okay, I have to have like, my fluency time right here, but it’s like, no, you can embed that into a lot of other parts of your day. And we don’t have to have as like, rigid of a schedule with like specific boxes.

Melissa
And especially at the elementary level, if you have them for the whole day. I mean, it can really happen anytime during the day.

Lori
Okay, so I’m gonna jump in and elaborate a little on that performance idea. So definitely make fluency practice practical through performance, think about authentic ways to get students to perform during class to make it have a purpose for them, right. We know students do better when they are motivated when they have that purpose.

Lori
I mean, I think we can be as creative as having students perform within their small groups, right? It doesn’t have to be an external thing. It doesn’t have to be a big rah rah situation. But if you want it to be, it can be that too. I think you can have partner classes, right? If you have other grade level classes, we could be doing it for them other teachers.

Lori
The point is that oral reading practice pays off. And that’s what we want to instill in our students, right. We want them to have that purposeful practice. I know that one of the things if I were a middle school teacher I’d be thinking about is like, How can I draw in my middle school students to this and I mean, recording their performance. Middle schoolers love to be recorded, they think they’re on Tik Tok all the time, I have one.

Lori
But I think that’s a really safe way too like, because they could do it privately, too, then if they don’t want to be in front of a group. We talked with a middle school teacher from Baltimore. And what I love about this is that she made fluency part of her in class routine, but she made it meaningful to students because they were performing an excerpt of a speech from a book they were reading.

Lori
So if you’ve ever read Animal Farm, which I think a lot of the population has, that the classic Animal Farm, students were excited to perform squealers speech, and then also it helped them understand it better when they read the book. So students got a deeper understanding of the text. But they also got to express that understanding through the speech through performing that speech.

Lori
You know, and I just would reiterate too like, Melissa is really, really practical ideas of like fit in fluency throughout the day of your elementary you know, choral read those directions, echo read the directions. Also, this can happen across content areas, not just ELA.

Lori
And one thing I will say and like I taught high school, practical strategies like echo reading, and choral reading for fluency, high school readers still like them, if you can sell it to them. Like, I was always so energetic about it that, like, I really rarely had a kid say, No, I’m not going to participate in that. Because if you can build the relationship and kind of teach them how it’s benefiting them, they’ll do it. They’ll try it. So just a little plug there. Like it’s it’s really fun to make that connection and to, you know, even at the high school level, elementary stuff still works.

Sara
I love that. And I think the you know, the performance side of it is so important. And I think sometimes again, as teachers we can be so tempted to be like I don’t have time to do a big performance, but it’s like it doesn’t have to be long and like you were saying students can even perform in front of their small groups.

Sara
But students love to perform, right, like whether it’s a formal production thing, or just getting the opportunity to share. And so I think just really focusing on that is such a practical thing to do. And it does not have to take as much time as teachers think.

Lori
And I love thinking about the recording too, as an opportunity to share with families and caregivers, like this is the progress your student has made over time, like that recording is really just, you know, just shows exactly the progress. And I think that’s so powerful too.

Melissa
One of the teachers we talked to you talked about, he actually had them listen to their, like, beginning of year, and then the end of year, and even the students could then see like, oh, my gosh, like, I got that much better. Wow. Absolutely.

Sara
And I was gonna say for I know, we’re obviously at the end of the year, but for teachers listening and make that as part of your like fall to do list, record your students in an audio performance, so that way, they have that very physical, tangible proof of their growth throughout the year. Great suggestions.

Sara
Okay. So here’s another question. And I feel like again, I definitely had this question when I was in the classroom. Okay, what exactly are tier one, tier two and tier three words? I feel like there’s a lot of conversation about it. But what is the difference?

Melissa
Yeah, absolutely. These tiers of words were actually defined by Isabel Beck and Margaret McEwen, who many of you may know from the books that they’ve written back in 1985. So they’re not new terms. They’ve been around a while. But they’re great ways of defining different types of vocabulary. So we keep them around.

Melissa
So tier one words are high frequency words, and they’re what we use in our everyday language, you know, so these are words that my five year old, most of his vocabulary is made up of tier one words, because he’s learned it just through speaking and listening, even from you know, the television, me school, just from from what he has heard.

Melissa
So they’re the most common words. And you would think that we might use some more technical terms in our speech, but we don’t write we use pretty basic terms in our world language. So there’s a million examples, but box cup ball sea run, every word that we use, when we’re speaking.

Sara
This podcast is filled with tier one words. Yeah.

Melissa
Yes, completely. The key here is that we we learn these just through listening, right, just through listening and speaking, that’s how we learn those words. Tier two words, and tier three words. They’re different from tier one, because of the way we learn them.

Melissa
So we learned them through either being explicitly taught. So someone is actually a teacher, usually, but could be anyone, I guess, teaching you what that word means. Or through reading, because most texts actually have more sophisticated vocabulary. And even if you look in children’s books, I mean, I’m reading to my son every night.

Melissa
So I know this, like that’s where he learns some new words that we don’t use in our speech at home. What does that word mean, mom, right. So even in children’s books, it’s more sophisticated vocabulary than what we use in speech, then it really gets sophisticated as you go through school.

Melissa
But the difference between tier two and tier three, tier two, those are academic words that you can really use across different domains. So they are really high utility words that can be used differently.

Melissa
So I’ll give one example is the word function. So you know, we have functions in math, but you can also talk about the functions of different organs in the body and science and health classes. You also have, you know, just the function of a law in social studies, right? So you can use function in so many different ways in different areas, that it’s a really, it has so many different meanings. So that’s tier two, because it’s something that can be used all across the board, anywhere you go.

Melissa
Tier three is a lot more specific. So here, it’s very content specific, specialized. And this is when you get into a word like I’ll use the word isotope is one of the examples we give in the book. I mean, I don’t know where you use the word isotope, except for a chemistry class.

Sara
I don’t use the word isotope. So.

Melissa
So yeah, a word like that is tier three, because it really is specific to some kind of content area that you’re not going to use often. But you do need it. If you’re in a chemistry class, you need to know what that word means. So it is it’s important.

Melissa
Just one other quick point to make here about how we learn those different words, especially for tier two and tier three, we just want to make the point that I know I learned vocabulary in high school, probably not definitely not how you should, which was like I had a vocabulary book, gave me a list of words. I did whatever was in the book for the week, and then we took a test on Friday.

Melissa
I don’t know what those words were, why I had to learn them. It was just what we did. They didn’t connect to anything. Somehow I did well on those tests. But did those words stick with me? I don’t know. You know, I don’t know. Maybe some of them did, but probably most of them didn’t.

Melissa
But what we know is that when we learn words, we want them to connect with other things we’re learning or something that we already know. So it’s really, really best to do to learn these, especially tier two and tier three words in context of something so they’re reading a bunch of books about the ocean and they’re learning different things about what the oceans like.

Melissa
Then you can have words like marine and squid and phosphorescent and luminous and all these words that then have somewhere to sit in their brains because they’re learning about this thing. So they it makes sense to them and they can connect to it.

Sara
Yeah, I love that reminder. And I, when I was first started teaching, we had a basil program. And I remember having those weekly vocabulary words with a vocabulary quiz. And it’s like, my students would always ace the vocabulary quiz. And then two weeks later, would have no recollection of the word. And I was always like, there has to be a better way to teach. Turns out there actually is I just was when I first started teaching.

Lori
And it’s a lot messier too, it’s not as neat and organized as a quiz on Friday. Unfortunately.

Melissa
It goes back to Laurie what you were saying about, like, we put it in a bucket, right? It’s Oh, there’s vocabulary time. And we have our vocabulary list. And we do in our vocabulary book over here, separate from everything else. And that’s really not the best way.

Sara
But even though it’s messy, I find that like vocabulary, I love anything that’s related to like word study vocabulary learning, it’s just like words, words are so fun. They’re so interesting, and they can be so fun for students. So Lori, what are some practical sort of vocabulary tips for teachers?

Lori
Yeah, well, so first, I’ll start by saying I think of this, like these semantic networks that Melissa was talking about, I think of them like a spider web in your brain. And that when students read and hear and speak and write these, these words, these more complex words, that then they’ll stick together. So the spider web kind of melds together with those familiar concepts.

Lori
So I think as teachers, we can choose words that are worth knowing, right? So those are ways that we can think about the words that we choose, and then include them throughout the day, right. So model, how to use them, point them out in texts. I mean, ultimately, we’ve chosen them because they’re in the texts that we’re reading, and encourage students to use them in academic conversations, right, we can encourage them, like, I really like you to think about using this word and attorney to talk and in their writing.

Lori
And I think the more we can draw students attention to the using, then that’s where we’re going to get the bang for our buck, because they’re going to build their own spider webs in their brains. And that’s what we want, right? We want them to become curious wordsmiths, and I think Lynn Stone said that on our podcast, and I just I loved it that like we want students to become wordsmiths. We want them to be asking questions about words and noticing things about words.

Lori
One way, this is like the most fun practical tip ever. And I know that for, you know, the early elementary teachers, you might be thinking, Okay, I have a lot of stuff on my walls already. So no pressure if this doesn’t work.

Lori
But later elementary, you might be looking to put some things on your wall, I know, you know, the older you get, the less less stuff you tend to have around the room, and middle school.

Lori
So there are vocabulary walls that are it’s not a word wall. It’s a vocabulary wall. And it’s interactive. And students can make this vocabulary wall so that as you’re learning about words, and they’re being curious about words, you’re capturing it on the wall, and students can manipulate it, check out the morphology, the etymology of the words.

Lori
Now, one thing we do say in the book is that like, we know that this might not be Pinterest worthy. Like, I know that that’s hard for me to accept, like, it’s not always going to look beautiful. But the ownership of the students being curious wordsmiths is going to benefit them in the long run.

Lori
And these vocabulary walls that then they can add to an ongoing basis and keep constructing, they might draw pictures by the words, they might be writing their own definitions, all of these things, when we focus on meaning making and student using it, it’s going to pay off exponentially. So that I think is one of the most practical ways that we can encourage the playfulness of words in the classroom and at any age or grade.

Sara
I love that suggestion. And I think you know, yes, it’s not very Pinterest worthy, but it’s so student centered. And just the whole idea of you know, I love how you said choosing words that are worth knowing. But ultimately, we need to get our students to use those words.

Sara
You know, I often think about how, again, and these are things that I did in the classroom, it’s like, okay, I taught that, like taught those vocabulary words, check, check, check, but it’s like if my students aren’t using those words and have internalized them, then like my instruction wasn’t as effective as it should have been. So I love trying to really get ways to get students to use those words and to getting them to become a wordsmith.

Sara
I know one of my favorite quotes from Wiley Blevins book is getting students to become word watchers. And just that idea of like getting students to notice words. I’m like, that’s, that’s what we want. So love those tips.

Lori
For sure. And if there’s no space for a wall, you know, a little composition book is always a great, great tool.

Sara
Absolutely. One final question that you guys have from your book that we’re going to share with my listeners today is the question of I keep hearing that we shouldn’t be teaching reading comprehension strategies in isolation. So what does that mean? And what should we do instead?

Melissa
Yeah, this is a really big question. And I just want to point out that the question and specifically says we shouldn’t be teaching reading comprehension strategies in isolation, not just that we shouldn’t be teaching reading comprehension strategies, period. Because I think that’s been misinterpreted a bit.

Melissa
Lori, and I have never advocated for not teaching reading strategies at all. There’s a ton of research behind them. But what we advocate against is this teaching it in isolation. So I’ll read our exact definition from our book. I love saying that isn’t that fun?

Melissa
So what we said was isolated strategy instruction is instruction designed to help students to become expert at using a strategy. And that’s what Lori, you were kind of describing this earlier. I was describing it a bit too, which was like, we spent all this time focused on can they do whatever the strategy is?

Melissa
So let’s we we always pick on finding the main idea, I’ll say inferences, making inferences, right? That’s what I’m going to introduce inferences to you. We’re going to get some really great passages this week, because you can make good inferences from them doesn’t matter what they are, right? Doesn’t matter what the text is. We’re just going to make inferences. Can you do that? And then I’m going to check on it. Can they can they make inferences?

Melissa
And then what like what we said was that supposedly is supposed to then say, well, now they can make inferences in anything they read because they have mastered this. And that’s what we say we don’t want them to do, right? Because what we want them to do is learn how to make an inference. Yes, probably in the younger grades, you don’t need to spend a ton of time teaching them how to make an inference.

Melissa
Meaning I mean, I, I saw, I was guilty of it, you know, teaching them making an inference in middle school, teaching them how to make an inference in high school, as if they’d never heard that before. Like, literally, I’m going to teach you how to make an inference. This is what making an inference is, let me model it for you, as if they hadn’t done it. Right.

Melissa
What I know now is they’ve learned that since they were I mean, they were probably doing it even with read alouds. In kindergarten in first grade, they were making inferences. So we don’t need to spend a ton of time teaching them how to do it, we need them using it, right, because the texts are getting harder and harder. And the whole point, this is what you should do instead, we want them to comprehend their grade level text and get something out of it. This is how they are building knowledge, right.

Melissa
So there’s also confusion about building knowledge where it’s like, I don’t know what it is, we’re just giving them facts. That’s what building knowledge is. But we want them to build knowledge from what they read. So they use the strategies when the text gets complex for them, so that they can understand it and build something from it. And the big thing is that those texts do matter. Right. So I brought that up earlier that the texts don’t really matter, but they do.

Melissa
And just I’ll read one more quote from our book, which is from a research study in 2023. That said, strategy instruction is most effective when it’s paired with building students knowledge. So you want to do both, we want to pair them together. It’s not an either, or, we don’t need to pit them against each other. They work together.

Sara
What you described is exactly how I taught when I was in fourth grade, right? It’s like, okay, we’re gonna focus on inferences, and then we’re gonna assess them. And it’s like, okay, these students didn’t master it. So they’re gonna get more practice with teaching inferences.

Sara
And it wasn’t until recently, when it’s like, oh, there’s so much more that goes in to comprehension than just the strategies. And it’s not about the strategies. It’s about, can they read really any text and extract meaning from that? So I love that we’re sort of shifting our perspective on you know, how to teach comprehension strategies. And really, the focus is on the text.

Sara
Lori, what are some practical things that we could do to put this into place?

Lori
Okay, so like Melissa said, we can have our students read authentic, complex texts and use appropriate strategies. That’s super important, right? Making sure the strategy fits the text, not the text fits the strategy, which that’s the reverse of what we used to do, right? I know, I used to be like, well, I want to teach me an idea, I need to find a text that fits me in it.

Lori
So instead, we’re putting the text at the center. And we’re thinking about what appropriate strategies we can use to better understand the text. Right.

Lori
So we actually have a really great planning tool in the book. And it’s a it’s a printable, so if you grab the book, you can scan a QR code and print out a blank one, we have a sample in in it. But you want to think about the text that you’re planning to use. So read it, right? And then think about what makes it complex or not like if it’s not complex, put it down and choose a different one, right?

Lori
Or if you have your curriculum text, and you’re tied to it, think about what makes it complex. And also then what will help students make meaning from it, like how will students make meaning from this text?

Lori
One of the things that Sue Pimentel who wrote the Common Core standards, she told us that the point of reading is to learn from what we read, and that is what we want to keep kind of at the top of mind as we’re doing this work. Some listeners out there might be thinking, Well what happens when the text is beyond my students, instructional reading level, right? How will they access this text? With the strategies?

Lori
I think the first and foremost thing to remember is that students can handle challenging texts. And also, if we’re thinking about supporting our students, we can scaffold to have smaller chunks of it, we can use fluency to our advantage, like we just talked about, right, we can use small chunks of text to build their fluency at really important parts, so that they have that knowledge going into reading.

Lori
And we know that research shows that when given the right support, our weakest readers can make more gains than our strongest readers, with texts that are one to four grade levels above their instructional level, that is a direct quote from the book, we will send you that study link so that you can put it in the show notes.

Lori
But for that to happen, though, they do need like that continued instruction in vocabulary and text structure. And in all the other aspects, what I like to call, like good teaching things, right? You know, to grow as readers, they have to be building their stamina, and building their repertoire of strategies and understanding that texts are complex, and that syntax is complex. And sometimes there’s commas in places that make it really tricky to read, etc.

Lori
Yeah, so I think really just practicing those strategies. And as the teacher, we can plan for this. So using a planning tool, where we are reading the text, we’re jotting what makes it complex. And then we’re thinking about what strategies and what scaffolds will help students make meaning from this text.

Sara
I love that. And I love just the reminder that we don’t need to be afraid of complex texts that our students can handle it and that there are, you know, scaffolds and supports that we can put in place to do that. And I think in a lot of cases, students actually thrive when the texts are more complex, because they’re learning something right? It’s filled with knowledge that they haven’t acquired yet. So it’s interesting. It’s exciting.

Lori
Yeah. So Meredith Lubin into Pimentel, both who, you know, standards, authors, said simpler texts, by their very nature lack the features that make text complex, forcing students to artificially practice using strategies where there’s no real need.

Lori
And I think about that all the time, like I because I did it when you know, I remember doing the isolated strategy instruction. And like students had this, you know, where you would copy out of the book. So it’s like a little paragraph. And then underneath, you’d practice using the strategy. And it was like fake using the strategy or.

Melissa
Because it was really just trying to show your teacher that you knew how to use the strategy.

Lori
Correct. Instead of actually using to understand a complex text, which would require you to use the strategy.

Sara
Oh, I love that. And really thinking about that, right? If our texts are missing those complex features or vocabulary, like our students are never going to actually develop that deeper understanding.

Sara
I love I love hearing you guys talk about this. I’m like, I wish we could just I want to ask you all 50 questions from the book. I am very excited to read your new book. I know my audience is gonna be very excited to read it as well.

Sara
Before we wrap this up, though, I always love asking my listeners, what really advice or encouragement do you have for teachers, who are really just starting to either learn about the science of reading and maybe are feeling overwhelmed by everything there is to learn things that they have to, you know, change up in their classroom, and you know, maybe they’re lacking confidence in their ability to bring it into the classroom?

Melissa
Well, I mean, our book is a great start, but I won’t sell it too hard. But it really is very friendly. And we have been where they’ve been. So you know, we we completely understand.

Melissa
But I mean, I think one thing I would say to someone in that situation is like, we’re all still learning. I mean, Lori and I, like we’re in this over 20 years, we master’s degrees and being a reading specialist, and we’re still learning so, you know, give yourself a lot of grace, because you’re not alone.

Melissa
And even if it seems like other people know more, like I mean, we’re all still learning things every single day. So just you know, find, find, find a buddy that will learn with you like Lori and I did and, and make sure just keep that open mind so that you keep learning.

Lori
I agree. Find a buddy. That’s a really important suggestion, someone who you can talk to and text and share articles with. It’s just so much fun to talk about it with someone else.

Lori
And one of our guests, a kindergarten teacher, Kristin Poppins, who we adore, she said we found her early on, and we just love what she does for students because she shared how she learned about the science of reading how she implemented it in her classroom slowly over time. At first she was like, Oh, no.

Lori
And so she said to us go as slow as you need to, but as fast as you can. And so that’s what I would say if you’re just learning about, you know, the research that maybe you hadn’t learned about before. Take your time, but keep going and go as as fast as you can, but as slow as you need to, you know, so fine.

Melissa
I never thought of that for teachers, only for students.

Sara
I love that quote. Absolutely. It does. That’s so that’s such a good it’s like yeah, take take your time, but also keep going.

Lori
Yeah, exactly.

Sara
I love it. Well, this has been so fun. I like I said, I’ve just really enjoyed listening to you guys, I appreciate how much you’re willing to share your own learning experience with other educators, you know, through your podcast, and now through your book.

Sara
How can my audience connect with you if they want to continue learning from you? What are some places that they can check you out on the internet?

Melissa
So our website is literacypodcast.com very easy to find. As you can find all of our episodes there information about the book there.

Lori
You can sign up for our newsletter, where we have tons of exclusive links for from podcast episodes and book content. So you can sign right up there.

Melissa
And then @literacypodcast on most of our social media, definitely Instagram, Twitter, X, whatever we call it. Facebook, just Melissa Lori Love Literacy. And we have a Facebook group. So you can join the private group too, if you want to, if you need somebody to chat with. You have a whole group of 10,000 people there to chat with.

Sara
That’s awesome. And we will link to all of those in the show notes. So again, Melissa and Lori, congratulations on your new book. And thank you so much for coming on today to share a little bit about it.

Melissa
Thank you.

Lori
Thank you. We’re big fans of your work and your podcast too, so thank you so much, Sara.

Sara
Thank you so much.