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

Episode 256 
Faith Howard shares practical strategies for improving literacy skills in middle and high school students, focusing on decoding multisyllabic words, spelling routines, and fluency practices. This episode offers actionable insights for educators aiming to enhance reading comprehension and word attack skills.

Resources 
Encoding & Decoding with Word Pyramids Blog
I Was Doing Fluency Wrong - Until I Made It About Knowledge Blog
Teachers Teach Teachers | Science of Reading YouTube Channel Video
Read Like Us Podcast Episode with Jake Downs & Chase Young 
Tight Ten Article
Literacy Lab with Faith Facebook Page 
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 literacypodcast@greatminds.org.

If you’ve ever wondered how to help your students decode longer words, this episode is for you! We’re joined by literacy researcher and professor Devin Kearns to talk all about teaching multisyllabic words.
Many phonics programs focus on single-syllable words, but what happens when students hit big words and get stuck? Devin unpacks the research behind why that happens and what we can do instead. We talk about:
flexible decoding strategies,
when and how to teach syllables and morphemes,
and what “set for variability” really looks like in the classroom (spoiler: it’s not guessing!).
You’ll walk away with practical, research-backed ideas to help your students read longer words with confidence.
Devin M. Kearns, Ph.D., is the Goodnight Distinguished Professor in Early Literacy at NC State, where he studies early reading and collaborates with experts in psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience to explore the brain basis of reading.

RESOURCES
Helping Students With Dyslexia Read Long Words: Using Syllables and Morphemes by Devin M. Kearns and Victoria M. Whaley
Following the Rules in an Unruly WritingSystem: The Cognitive Science ofLearning to Read Englishby Devin M. Kearns and Matthew J. Cooper Borkenhagen
Syllable Division: New Data that Can Inform Intervention by Joanne Marttila Pierson, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
On Eating Elephants and Teaching Syllabication by Tim Shanahan
Looking for more literacy support and resources? Explore all of our podcast episodes, free listening guides, and classroom tools at literacypodcast.com.
Connect with us! Email us at literacypodcast@greatminds.org.
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 literacypodcast@greatminds.org.

Episode 255
Experts Don Compton & Laura Steacy explore the complexities of multisyllabic word reading and the decoding challenges older readers encounter, especially those with dyslexia. They discuss how readers navigate complex words using different decoding strategies, the role of morphology and “set for variability” in reading development, and how tools like the DELP database help predict word difficulty. The episode offers practical insights into supporting literacy development and improving instruction for struggling readers.
Resources 
D-ELP Tool 
FCRR Student Center Activities 

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 literacypodcast@greatminds.org.

Episode 254
In this episode, we sit down with kindergarten teacher Anjanette McNeely to take a close look at one powerful instructional routine: word chaining.
Anjanette walks us through exactly what word chaining looks like in her classroom, from the materials she uses to the language she says, and explains why this routine is such an effective way to build both phonemic awareness and phonics at the same time.
We also explore how word chaining supports orthographic mapping, why connecting sounds to print matters, and how small instructional shifts, like continuous blending and interleaving, can have a big impact on student learning.
Whether you're new to word chaining or looking to refine your practice, this episode offers practical ideas you can try right away.
Resources
Word Chaining: An Efficient and Effective Alternative to Oral Phonemic Awareness by Anjanette McNeely: Blog post about word chaining and a video of Anjanette's classroom in action 
Word Chaining: A Simple Routine for Reading and Spelling (printable) You can see a picture of Anjanette's word chaining tray here
Word Chains for Decoding and Encoding Practice: An overview on how to make and use word chains to teach decoding and encoding (from UFLI) 
44 Phonemes (video): Learn how to pronounce the 44 phonemes in the English alphabet (from Rollins Center for Language and Literacy)

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 literacypodcast@greatminds.org.

We’re revisiting this episode with Matt Burns because it offers one of the clearest explanations of phonemic awareness and how it fits into reading instruction.
In this conversation, Matt helps unpack what the research actually says and what that means for what we prioritize in the classroom. He explains why phonemic awareness is not a standalone precursor to reading, but develops alongside it, and why decoding should take center stage as students move into the upper elementary grades.
If you’ve ever felt unsure about how phonemic awareness fits into your instruction, or what to focus on as students progress, this episode brings clarity and practical direction.
Resources
Phonemic Awareness, Research, Misconceptions, and Fads with Dr. Matt Burns
They Say You Can Do Phonemic Awareness Instruction “In the Dark”, But Should You? A Critical Evaluation of the Trend Toward Advanced Phonemic Awareness Training
RIP to Advanced Phonemic Awareness | Shanahan on Literacy
Phonemic Awareness with Letters YouTube video, Matt Burns
Matt Burns YouTube Channel 
National Reading Panel Report 
Elkonin Boxes, Reading Rockets
Florida Center for Reading Research 
UFLI Foundations 
Ep. 159: Back to School: Science of Reading or Snake Oil with Holly Lane 
Road to the Code, Book 
IES Practice Guides 
Empirical Analysis of Drill Ratio Research: Refining the Instructional Level for Drill Tasks, Matt Burns (meta-analysis)

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 literacypodcast@greatminds.org.