Recently, there have been claims that reading achievement is being suppressed because schools are teaching reading with excerpts and other short pieces rather than with complete books. These critics say that they want to go back to a time when reading was taught with complete books. This podcast explores those claims and reveals what research has to say on the matter.

Are we making our instructional decisions based upon comprehension data or learning data? Is our purpose to make sure that students gain immediate comprehension of the instructional text or is it to improve kids' reading ability so they will be more successful with future texts? The answer might surprise you.

I've argued against teaching reading at students' instructional levels. Does that mean that I'm against running records and informal reading inventories? What could such tests possibly provide if you aren't teaching with leveled books? This podcast will answer those questions and many more.

This podcast explores the role that pictures play in teaching decoding, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.

This podcast explains the nature of disciplinary literacy and lays out a description of what role it should play in the elementary school reading curriculum.

Middle school reading scores are stagnant or dropping all over the country. What can we do about that? This podcast explores what a science of reading based response should look like. If you want to help upper elementary, middle school, and high school readers, please tune in!

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.

These days there is much interest in reading fluency as educators have become aware of the important contribution it makes to reading proficiency. However, writing fluency is not accorded the same attention -- undermining writing development and what it can contribute to learning to read. This podcast explores writing fluency -- what it is, why it matters, and most importantly how to teach it successfully.

This podcast explores a series of question about sight vocabulary, its role in reading development, and how it is best dealt with in the classroom.

This podcast explores the relationship between phonics teaching and morphology instruction. Some authorities suggest that morphology should replace phonics, while others see it as a supplement to phonics that should be delayed until decoding is well in hand.

In the last episode, we examined the research on comprehension instruction and how it has changed. In this episode we are exploring the kinds of instruction that should count when it comes to teaching students to comprehend what they read. It gets into issues of knowledge, strategies, questioning routines, and language.