Excellent courses about the science of reading

Hello! Anna Geiger here from The Measured Mom, and today, I want to share with you some excellent online courses that will help you as you learn more about the science of reading.

A few years ago, I switched from a balanced literacy approach to a more structured approach based on the things I was reading and learning. I continue to read and learn, and you can find a book list of all the books that I recommend on my website, which I'll link to in the show notes.

But something else that really helped me after I'd done my initial study was to take some online courses so I could really get the full picture, and I want to share those with you today. One course I took and recommend is called "The Science of Reading Short Course." It used to be from The Big Dippers, now it's part of Hill Learning Center, but I'll link to it in the show notes. It was really nice because it had some quality information in nicely structured format.

When I took the course, there were very few videos, if any at all, it was just a reading course. So I wouldn't want it to be the only course that I took. But it was only $100, which I thought was really affordable. The only issue is you only get access for six months, or at least that was the case when I took it, so I can't go back to it and tell you more about it. I've lost access, that's a bit of a bummer, but I would go ahead and check out that one. You can get a lot of helpful information for a pretty good price.

What's nice about it is you can really trust the people that helped develop this course. We've got the Reading Teacher's Top 10 Tools, which I'll talk to you about in a minute, The Right to Read Project, which is with Margaret Goldberg (she's been a guest on this podcast before), and the 95 Percent Group, which has excellent resources. So it's very trustworthy, and I like that it's self-paced and easy to access.

Another really good course is the "Online Elementary Reading Academy" from Core Learning. This is not cheap, it is expensive, currently, it's $650 per person. However, with that you do get the Teaching Reading Sourcebook, which is at least $70 or $80 by itself and worth that money. It's an amazing guidebook. I think the assessment book also came with this course. I own it, and I don't think I bought it separately. So this is really, really good, and especially because you have a teacher actually working with you. So you can't, I don't think, join at any time you want; you join for a period of time.

However, I checked and I still have access to the lessons. I'm not sure if you get lifetime access, but it's been a long time and I can still access those. It's definitely quality. It has some good videos, and you get some really nice supplementary material and support from an instructor. So that's another one to consider.

Another one I took was called "The Reading Teacher's Top 10 Tools" from Deb Glaser. She is amazing, a professor with a doctorate, has lots of good things to say, and is very knowledgeable. When I got it, it was only $25 a month, which was amazing because I only needed it for a few months, and then I was ready to be done with it. I would've liked it if I could have access forever because there are definitely things I'd like to go back and reread. However, that does get very expensive.

It's now part of "Tools 4 Reading" and the price has gone up quite a bit. It's $45 a month and $500 for the year. So it's really not affordable to have something that you access in the future whenever you want. However, there's really good information in it.

Another course I recommend is called "Keys to Beginning Reading," and that's from Joan Sedita of Keys to Literacy. She is fantastic, this course is great, and she's got videos and text. It comes with a printed book that's spiral-bound, very fat, and it's just a really good resource. As far as I can tell, when you join this course, you get access forever for as long as it's online. So you can go back and reread or get additional information whenever you want. So that's another really good one that I recommend.

Those four courses are the ones that I took to help me learn more about the science of reading and rethink my own course.

So I created a course about reading back in 2017 with my colleague Becky Spence of This Reading Mama. We had many, many teachers join the course and take it. But when we learned more about the science of reading, we closed it for a year so I could study everything and completely revamp all the lessons. Now you can trust that it is a science of reading-backed course, and it is open to the public twice a year. We're actually opening it on October 10th, 2022.

The cost of the course's regular price is $309. But when we open it for just a few days at the beginning, it's only $249 if you purchase in that first few days Make sure you're on the waitlist at teachingeveryreader.com, so you can catch that early bird price.

What makes our course different from many of the others that I've mentioned here is, number one, it's lifetime access. So for as long as it's online, you get access.

But number two, perhaps a bigger thing, is that it has lots and lots of printable resources for students, high quality printable resources that you're used to from This Reading Mama and The Measured Mom. These are resources that cover the big five: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. We also have a bonus module, which is all about teaching learners with dyslexia.

If you'd like to learn more about the course or just more about the science of reading, we recommend signing up for a free workshop that we're giving on October 10th of this year. We've given this workshop before, but feel free to sign up for a refresher. Or if you've never seen it, you should definitely join us! We're going to be giving it on Monday and Tuesday of next week, if you're listening to this in real time. It's called "Four Simple Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into K-2," and you can sign up for that at themeasuredmom.com/liveworkshop.

We have received and continue to receive so much incredible feedback from the thousands of teachers who have taken "Teaching Every Reader." Mari wrote this, "I think your 'Teaching Every Reader' course is so well-developed. It gives an overview, it dives deep, and, this is what makes it really special, it motivates further independent reading and study, which is so important for critical thinking."

In August Paula wrote this, "What an amazing course your 'Teaching Every Reader' is! I've been teaching for 29 years. I'm a certified special education and elementary education teacher. I learned so many useful strategies that I can't wait for school to start and for me to dive right in. The amount of amazing resources that I have been provided with is unbelievable!"

Ellen shared this email in August, "I just want to share, I completed my first year as a teacher last school year. As I get ready to start my second year, this course helped me incredibly. I feel so much more confident and educated about the process of learning to read, and I feel equipped to help my future students learn to read."

I keep all of this feedback in a folder in my email and I could go on and on, but I wanted to share those three, the three most recent that I've received, to help you know that there is so much goodness inside "Teaching Every Reader."

To get links to all the courses I've mentioned today, plus a link to the live workshop that we're giving on October 10th and 11th, plus a link to the course, which opens on October 10th, head to the show notes for this episode, themeasuredmom.com/episode95. Talk to you next time!