An introduction to our Balanced to Structured Literacy Interview series

Hello, Anna Geiger here, jumping in for a quick Memorial Day episode to tell you about our summer series that's coming up.

I'm super excited because this series is the first set of interviews I've actually given on the podcast. In the past, I've always wanted to do summer podcast episodes but real life always gets in the way - trying to manage our family vacations, having all six kids at home, four of them are particularly loud boys, just makes it really hard to sit down and record podcast episodes.

Because I've prerecorded them, they're all ready to go, so they'll be airing the beginning of June all the way through mid-August. We're going to take a week off for July 4 but otherwise you'll be able to listen all summer long.

These interviews are longer than my typical episodes, usually around thirty to forty minutes, so enjoy them on your summer walks or during your summer vacations.

This series is with educators who have transitioned from balanced literacy to a more structured approach. We'll be talking to all kinds of people. We'll be talking to the authors of "Shifting the Balance," Jan Burkins and Kari Yates. We'll be talking to real change-makers, people who have worked really hard to make a difference in how schools approach the teaching of reading, like Margaret Goldberg.

We'll be talking to people who have worked to establish a presence on social media to really bring awareness to the science of reading and to educate other teachers, people like Farmer Loves Phonics, that's Jessica Farmer, and Campbell Creates Readers, that's Savannah Campbell, and Heidi Jane from Droppin' Knowledge with Heidi. We'll chat with Gina from Get Literacy. Gina has a special story because her daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia and this really led her down the path of learning about the science of reading. We'll also talk to Lindsay Kemeny, an active teacher just like Gina whose child was also diagnosed with dyslexia. We've got lots of great insights from both of them.

We'll be talking to people who have really worked hard to have informative, useful blog posts in addition to the resources that they sell on Teachers Pay Teachers. Christina Winter from Mrs. Winter's Bliss, and Sarah Paul from Sarah's Teaching Snippets.

We'll be talking to Dr. Wendy Farone who has been in education for many decades and has a wealth of information to share with us.

In addition to learning about how these teachers learned about the science of reading, we'll also get specific things that we can apply to our classrooms. We'll be talking about sound walls and how to structure your phonics lessons and a whole lot more. You don't want to miss it!

If you'd like to learn more about each of the episodes that we'll be airing this summer and the order that they'll be occurring, or you'd like to learn a little bit more about each of the people that I'll be interviewing, you can find all that information in the show notes for this episode, themeasuredmom.com/episode79.

I can't wait to talk to you next week and all summer long, see you then!