Sold a Story - Podcast Rankings and reviews

Thank you for your research. One of our children has struggled to read and is now in 3rd grade. He guesses words rather than sounding them out and we have become frustrated with him that he just doesn’t seem to get it. Until listening to your podcast we were lost at what to do next and how to help him become a good reader. Within the very first episode you described our experience almost exactly. Since that first listen we have stepped back to work on sounding out words so that he had the foundation needed instead of just making him read over and over again with us. This work you did is a game changer for us.

Excellent reporting on a fundamental problem that has been ignored far too long. I listened to every episode with my 10 year old son who was harmed by the “cueing” approach and still struggles to read. We both have a deeper understanding of why and just how messed up the system is. Thank you for shining a light on this and helping to create change.

As a former teacher of Balanced Literacy and now a parent of a dyslexic child and certified Orton Gillingham reading specialist, this podcast was so powerful. It explained so much of what I experienced in a private school setting where they taught and still teach with a Balanced Literacy approach. I have so much guilt about those students that I could not and did not help. After my child’s dyslexia diagnosis, I learned all I could and became a certified OG specialist. Now I know better so I do better. I think every educator, administrator, law maker, and parent should listen to this podcast. It’s very eye opening and so relevant to our future. Imagine if most children could learn to read appropriately. What would our society look like?
Thank you for making this podcast. I would love to hear more and continue on this journey. The battle for teaching based on the science of reading is not over.

This podcast was accurate, research-based, and entertaining. I learned so much about how and why I should adjust the strategies I use when teaching reading in my classroom. I will be recommending this to every teacher I know!

This episode exemplifies the problem of talking about something you know little about or haven’t experienced. Reading Recovery includes phonics in its daily thirty minutes lessons. I know, I was there doing it everyday for nine years. Each student makes an ABC book, matching a picture of their choice to each letter. Weeks are spent making that book and reading through it each day to learn letter names and sounds. A child would often tell me that he or she did not know a letter sound during reading until I prompted, “ yes you do, think of the picture in your ABC book that begins with that letter” and the child would smile and make the sound. Another daily component uses magnetic letters. The first few weeks are spent on sorting and identifying letters and then moves into “making and breaking” words: making a word, deconstructing it, putting it back together. Using Visual information is taught while reading. The prompt, which this podcaster seemed to dismiss, is used but often the reader has to be taught other visual strategies such as to sound out more of the word and also look at the parts of the word they know to help read the word. Another daily component is composing and writing a story with the child. The child is taught how to write the unknown words in their story by learning how to say the word slowly to identify the number of syllables and identify the sounds in the word by using “sound boxes”. The child writes the story ( one or two sentences) and is taught to check the words for accuracy. The teacher writes the story on a strip of paper and proceeds to cut it up for the child to reassemble it. All of the above happened everyday. Phonics is taught but the term is Visual information and learning how words work. It’s very unfortunate that this podcaster didn’t report thoroughly and didn’t observe an actual lesson.

I was so excited to listen to this podcast, not only because I’m an educator and an advocate, but also because I’m a parent whose oldest child will soon be learning how to read. I found the first few episodes utterly fascinating, and I FaceTimed my educator husband to tell him he had to tune in immediately!

But before long, I found myself tripped up by the reporting itself. The podcast portrays an over-simplified version of reading and builds many of its arguments on problematic false dichotomies. High quality literacy instruction requires research, common sense, and a commitment to honoring the needs of all students, even if those needs don’t fit the prevailing or emerging narrative.

Overall, I was really frustrated by this podcast, even though I agreed with some of its findings.