Learning Ally

Meeting the Needs of Secondary School Students with Dyslexia
2024-03-21 15:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York)
Join esteemed experts Dr. Asya Johnson and Dr. Kelli Sandman-Hurley for an insightful webinar dedicated to Meeting the Needs of Secondary School Students with Dyslexia. They’ll share invaluable insights and strategies to empower educators in supporting secondary students with dyslexia through their unique challenges.
Drawing on their extensive experience, Dr. Johnson and Dr. Sandman-Hurley will explore practical approaches and evidence-based practices specifically tailored for secondary students with dyslexia. This webinar aims to provide school leaders and educators with the tools and knowledge needed to create inclusive and effective learning environments that foster academic success and self-confidence among students with dyslexia at the secondary level.

What You’ll Explore to Support Secondary Students with Dyslexia:
With their expert guidance, we’ll delve into:

Specific Challenges: Understand the unique hurdles faced by secondary students with dyslexia, from complex texts to increased academic demands.
Evidence-Based Strategies: Discover proven methods to enhance reading and writing skills, specifically designed for students with dyslexia in secondary education.
Inclusive Teaching Practices: Learn how to implement inclusive strategies that create a supportive and empowering learning environment for secondary students with dyslexia.

Educators, school leaders, and professionals dedicated to enhancing literacy outcomes for their students are encouraged to attend. Don’t miss this opportunity to empower your secondary students with dyslexia with the tools they need to succeed academically and beyond!
Register to watch now!

Meeting the Needs of Students with Dyslexia in Middle and High School
2023-11-08 15:00 - 16:30
Empower your school leadership and educators with the knowledge and tools to create an inclusive learning environment for students with dyslexia in middle and high school. This webinar features experts Mallary Lattanze and Missy Purcell, who will focus on helping you understand the unique needs of these students as they develop decoding and spelling skills, analyze vocabulary, and enhance their reading comprehension. Together, we’ll explore strategies to support them in becoming more skilled and confident secondary students.

Key Learnings for Supporting Dyslexia in Middle and High School:
By participating in this webinar, attendees will:

Understand Unique Challenges & Strengths: Gain insight into the specific challenges and often unrecognized strengths associated with dyslexia in middle and high school students.
Explore Cognitive Processes: Delve into the cognitive processes involved in reading, spelling, and vocabulary development in dyslexic learners, providing a deeper understanding of their learning journey.
Recognize Intervention Importance: Understand the critical importance of effective intervention and ongoing support in facilitating success during secondary education for students with dyslexia.

Join us for this comprehensive webinar as we equip you with the knowledge and tools needed to effectively meet the needs of students with dyslexia in middle and high school. Together, we can pave the way for their success, empowering them to grow into more skilled and confident students. Don’t miss this opportunity to make a lasting impact on the lives of these exceptional learners.
Register to watch now!

What Every Administrator Needs to Know About the Science of Reading in PK-2
2023-07-26 15:00 - 16:00
Join esteemed expert Linda Diamond for a fascinating webinar on what every administrator needs to know about the Science of Reading in PK-2. This session is designed to demystify the Science of Reading, providing school leaders with the clarity and strategies necessary to drive effective and equitable literacy outcomes in their earliest grades.
Linda Diamond will address key questions and provide actionable insights, helping you understand how to implement foundational reading practices that set every student up for success. Learn how leadership is crucial for ensuring all children become capable readers from the very beginning.

Key Takeaways for Administrators:
In this webinar, you will learn about:

What the Science of Reading Is and Is Not: Gain a clear and concise understanding of the core principles of the Science of Reading, dispelling common misconceptions.
Boosting Comprehension: Discover how to effectively boost comprehension skills even while young students are still learning to decode.
Preventing Learning Gaps: Learn proactive strategies to prevent students from falling further behind in their reading development.
Supporting Educators: Understand what educators need from the earliest grades to ensure all children become capable readers.
Crucial Role of Leadership: Explore how strong leadership is the key to ensuring equitable and effective learning outcomes across your school or district.

This webinar is an essential opportunity for administrators to gain the knowledge and tools needed to lead their schools toward a future of confident, capable readers.

What PD for Long-Term Impact Looks Like: The Essential Professional Learning Process
2023-06-13 15:00 - 16:00
How do your educators respond to professional learning? How much do they implement? Do your teachers feel supported?
According to the Learning Pyramid, people only retain 5-10% of content from lectures or reading. That’s the bad news. The good news is they retain 75% when they practice. They retain 90% when they teach it to others! Providing quality content is just the beginning.
In this session, we will explore what makes professional learning truly effective. We will identify components that create a long-term impact on teaching and learning.

What Makes Professional Learning Effective?
This session is for leaders and educators. We will transform professional development programs. We’ll explore critical factors that make new knowledge stick. This will ensure teachers apply new skills daily and drive student growth.
In this webinar, we will:

See what prevents professional learning from sticking. We’ll uncover common barriers to retention and application.
Explore how to create lasting change. We’ll learn key elements to shift thinking. We’ll build a culture of continuous improvement.
Understand the multi-tiered support approach. We’ll discover how a layered system impacts professional learning success.

This webinar gives leaders a roadmap. They can ensure teachers feel supported. They can help them apply new concepts. This leads to higher implementation and better student outcomes.

Moving Past the Reading Wars: Peaceniks Lead the Way
2023-03-29 14:00 - 15:00
In this edLeader Panel, you hear from a group of researchers and practitioners who have dubbed themselves the “Reading Peaceniks” after meeting for two years and searching for ways to end the divisiveness of the reading wars. The goal of the Peaceniks is to bring together a broad spectrum across disciplines within literacy education to realize that there is more in common than there are differences. There are meaningful ways to present essential direct instruction that provide children with oral language development and the alphabetic coding that research has shown they need to develop into joyful readers and writers.
With the recent paper Print-to-Speech and Speech-to-Print: Mapping Early Literacy, published by Reading Rockets, the panelists, who are authors and contributing editors of the paper, have chosen to address essential components of instructional approaches at their earliest roots—PreK to Grade 1 or 2. In this paper, they found consensus with 35 renowned literacy thought leaders and researchers after much discussion and editing. It suggests “good practices” for early literacy that they hope will address that yearning for meaningfulness on both sides. Watch this edLeader Panel to:

Explore the viewpoints, priorities, and commonalities from the many literacy disciplines
Discuss the importance of including encoding and decoding that leads to reading and writing
Learn about actions you can take to promote harmony while spearheading a literacy revolution

The Secret Weapon to Unlock Student Achievement: Multimodal Literacy Instruction
2023-03-23 15:00 - 16:00
Unlock Student Achievement with Multimodal Literacy Instruction
Join expert educator Whitney Lawrence to discover why multimodal instruction is the key to unlocking deep comprehension and student achievement. While multisensory approaches have been a staple in education, the new frontier is multimodal literacy. This dynamic webinar will go beyond traditional methods to provide you with the most effective, research-backed strategies for helping your students become proficient, lifelong readers.
What You Will Learn:

Define Multimodality: Get a clear understanding of what multimodal literacy instruction is and how it differs from traditional multisensory approaches.
Effective Reading Comprehension Strategies: Learn practical, immediately applicable strategies for developing robust comprehension skills in readers of all ages.
Engage with Diverse Texts: Experience hands-on meaning-making practices using a variety of text forms, including picture books, paintings, and digital images, to prepare your students for a multimodal world.

Who Should Attend:
This webinar is perfect for K-12 teachers, literacy coaches, curriculum specialists, and anyone dedicated to improving student reading proficiency and engagement.

Linking Reading Comprehension to Funds of Knowledge
2023-02-07 14:00 - 15:00
A Deeper Dive into Reading Comprehension
Have you ever wondered how you can truly connect with your students and boost their reading comprehension? The answer might lie in their own lives. This enlightening edWebinar is all about linking reading comprehension to funds of knowledge. First, Dr. Molly Ness introduces the concept of “funds of knowledge” and reveals their powerful role in language development.

Bridging the Gap: Funds of Knowledge and the Science of Reading
Next, discover the fascinating relationship between funds of knowledge and the Science of Reading. We’ll explore their connections and disconnections to traditional background knowledge. By understanding this link, you can then create a more inclusive and effective learning environment for all students. By the end of this session, you will be prepared to start linking reading comprehension to funds of knowledge in your classroom.

Practical Strategies for Your Classroom
This session is highly practical. Specifically, you’ll learn to identify and evaluate texts for their alignment with students’ funds of knowledge. As a result, you’ll be better equipped to help students make deeper meaning of the materials they encounter. Ultimately, this will prepare your students for academic success.

Who Should Watch?
This recorded edWebinar is a must-watch for K-12 teachers, as well as school and district leaders committed to enhancing reading instruction and fostering a love of learning.
Register to watch today!

"My Kids Can't Read That!" How to Unlock Text to Read Right Now
2023-01-31 14:00 - 15:00
Is the complex text in your classroom causing a standstill? Many administrators and educators are working tirelessly to align with evidence-based reading instruction, but a crucial gap remains: students can’t access grade-level content. There’s an urgent need for solutions that work right now. Fortunately, immediate, effective strategies exist to help students overcome this challenge. Join literacy leaders Dr. Linda Baker and Dr. Gail Dalcourt as they share effective reading strategies and literacy solutions to help students engage with complex texts and boost literacy culture. They will teach you how to give students access to text in the right format, creating quick literacy wins that immediately impact academic success.

What You’ll Learn

Knowledge-Building is Key: Discover the critical role that knowledge building plays in the journey to reading proficiency.
Manage Demanding Texts: Learn how to successfully manage and navigate the demands of complex, grade-level text.
Immediate Access to Text: Understand how to provide students with immediate access to text through various formats and modalities.

This engaging webinar provides Louisiana educators with practical, actionable steps to unlock the power of reading for all students. Ultimately, you’ll learn how to help students read and comprehend grade-level content using these effective reading strategies.
Watch on-demand now!

Using Decodable Books to Teach Phonics and Word Recognition
2023-01-18 14:00 - 15:00
Reading with fluency and comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading instruction. To become a fluent reader, students must first develop strong word recognition—the ability to identify words accurately and automatically. So, how can educators build this crucial skill? The solution lies in a powerful combination of effective instructional strategies and the right tools, especially decodable books.
In this insightful edWebinar with speaker Barbara Steinberg, we will unlock the secrets to successful phonics and word recognition instruction. You will discover how phonics instruction progresses seamlessly from the sub-word level to the phrase, sentence, and text levels. Furthermore, we’ll explore and apply the core principles of explicit, systematic instruction to maximize student learning immediately.
Key Takeaways for Effective Reading Instruction:
This session provides actionable strategies you can implement right away. You’ll learn how to:

Evaluate instructional routines specifically designed to build both reading accuracy and automaticity.
Develop effective strategies for fluency instruction using decodable texts.
Examine practical small group lessons that demonstrate the power of decodable books for teaching phonics.

This session is essential for K-12 teachers, reading specialists, and school and district leaders who teach beginning reading or support older struggling readers. Don’t miss out! As a bonus, we will also share valuable, free resources to support your instruction.

Sound Walls: The Benefits of Using Them for ALL Students
2022-12-13 14:00 - 15:00
Using a sound wall in your classroom can fundamentally transform reading and spelling instruction! Because of the Science of Reading, we now better understand the critical role of phonetics and phonology in early literacy. Although students learn to speak early, teaching them how speech maps to print often gets missed. Developing strong phonemic awareness must happen before students can achieve automatic sight word reading. Therefore, using a sound wall is essential.
Expert Dr. Mary Ellis Dahlgren will show you how to explicitly teach the 44 speech sounds. You will learn how to make learning more concrete by focusing on articulation—observing what happens with the tongue, teeth, lips, and airflow when producing sounds. This is a vital stepping stone to orthographic mapping so all students can become fluent and proficient readers.
Key Takeaways for Building Reading Fluency:
This session provides clear, practical steps you can use in your daily practice. Educators will:

Learn about the importance of articulation and its direct connection to phoneme awareness.
Understand the strategic layout of a sound wall and why it’s more student-friendly than a traditional word wall.
Analyze common phonological errors students make and discover how to provide effective, corrective feedback.
Examine strategies for engagement as part of daily practice when building a sound wall with consonants and vowel phonemes.

This recorded edWebinar is highly valuable for K-12 teachers, reading specialists, and school and district leaders committed to effective literacy instruction.
Register now!

Disunity in Reading Instruction: The High Cost of Confusion
2022-11-30 02:00 - 03:00
Students follow the instruction their teacher provides. However, if they learn disproven methods, like 3-cueing, in a general education class and then move to decoding methods in intervention, they simply follow the directions for that specific moment. Students cannot possibly know which reading method is appropriate or harmful. This disunity in reading instruction causes confusion, stress, and detrimental outcomes for students and educators alike. Therefore, we must address this critical conflict now.
In this essential edWebinar, we will provide clear examples of the harm that instructional disunity creates. More importantly, you will learn how educators can lead change to implement a unified, effective approach. We will focus specifically on why all schools must adopt evidence-based reading practices across all learning spaces.
Actionable Steps for Unified Literacy Instruction:
This session empowers you to become a change agent within your school or district. Viewers will:

Understand the significant harm and setbacks created for students when disunity in reading instruction is present.
Be convinced of the dire need to teach evidence-based reading practices aligned to the Science of Reading in every space and place where students are learning.
Walk away with immediate, actionable steps on how to begin leading your school toward a unified path of instruction.

This recorded edWebinar is highly relevant for K-12 teachers, reading specialists, and school and district leaders looking to align their literacy programs.
Register to watch!

Dyslexia: Biases, Barriers, and Breakthroughs
2022-10-13 14:00 - 15:00
Research clearly identifies effective interventions for children with dyslexia. Still, the evaluation process remains often unclear and inconsistent. Disturbingly, Black students frequently receive fewer intensive resources to address their challenges. This happens for various reasons, including unconscious biases and lower expectations. An accurate dyslexia diagnosis can change the game for all students. This is especially true for those who risk being left behind if their needs go unmet.
In this vital edWebinar, speaker Jeannette Roberes addresses critical flaws in the evaluation process. She explores key principles impacting marginalized students who often face under- or misdiagnosis. Furthermore, we examine the historical perspective of testing. This helps us understand current systemic barriers to a dyslexia diagnosis.
Key Insights on Dyslexia Evaluation and Equity:
This session provides clear, actionable knowledge for K-12 educators. Viewers will learn:

Specific, identifiable barriers to a dyslexia diagnosis that disproportionately affect marginalized students.
What types of standardized tests make up a complete, thorough dyslexia evaluation.
Which core literacy skills an equitable assessment must meticulously measure.

This recorded edWebinar is essential for K-12 teachers, special educators, and district leaders. We must commit to equitable, research-backed practices to ensure every student gets the support they need.
Register to watch now!

The Simple View of Educational Success: Lessons from the Field
2022-09-20 14:00 - 15:00
What truly makes a school succeed against the odds? In this powerful edLeader Panel, Rebecca Miles, an early literacy coach consultant, shares her compelling practitioner’s story. She recounts the transformation of her former school and her attempts to replicate that success county-wide. Through these experiences, both successful and challenging, she developed a powerful framework: The Simple View of Educational Success. This model provides a clear formula for achieving true equitable instruction.
Rebecca will share lessons learned from schools and their leadership. She identifies critical factors that drive high-performing schools, especially those overcoming significant barriers. Furthermore, she outlines actionable strategies you can use to implement this framework in your own setting, regardless of your school’s starting point.
Key Insights on Educational Leadership and Equity:
This session provides school and district leaders with proven strategies for transformative change. Viewers will:

Examine the components of The Simple View of Educational Success.
Learn how leaders at all levels can foster equitable instruction by focusing on foundational elements.
Hear inspiring real-world examples of schools that achieved remarkable success by applying this simple, yet powerful, framework.
Discover practical steps for implementing this formula to promote systemic school improvement.

This recorded edLeader Panel is essential for K-12 teachers, instructional coaches, and school and district leaders committed to accelerating student achievement through equity and effective leadership.
Register to watch today!

We’ll Have What They’re Having: Exponential Reading Growth that Counts
2022-07-26 14:00 - 15:00
Achieving exponential growth in reading is the ultimate goal for every district leader. However, solving the literacy crisis requires more than just hope; it demands actionable plans and proven strategies. In this inspiring webinar, we open the doors to leaders from two distinct districts: the East Orange School District in New Jersey and the Lake Elsinore Unified School District in California. They share their blueprints for success and explain how they continuously improve literacy outcomes for their students.
Shifting the Paradigm: From Intervention to Inclusion
For years, many districts relied on pull-out methods for struggling readers. Shannon Pinck and Kate Dampier from Lake Elsinore describe how this approach often limited access to the core curriculum and separated students from their peers. In this session, you will discover how they shifted their mindset. Instead of removing students, they brought the intervention directly to the classroom. Consequently, they ensured that students with disabilities and those in general education interventions could access rigorous, standards-based curriculum alongside their classmates.
Igniting a Culture of Reading
Yukima Vannoy of East Orange shares how her district tackled flatlining reading scores by making reading relevant and exciting. You will hear about their massive success with initiatives such as the “10-day instructional cycle” and the Summer Reading Launch Party. By treating reading as a community celebration—complete with food trucks, marching bands, and local authors—East Orange fostered a genuine love for literacy. As a result, they witnessed a staggering 900% increase in reading volume over two years.
The Role of Human-Read Audiobooks
Both districts utilized a specific, powerful tool to bridge the gap: human-read audiobooks. The panelists explain how the Learning Ally Audiobook Solution allowed students to access grade-level content, regardless of their decoding levels. This approach reduces cognitive load, builds vocabulary, and boosts student confidence. You will hear touching stories of students who, for the first time, realized they could be readers and join conversations about popular books like Harry Potter.
Aligning with the Science of Reading
Finally, this session touches on the critical balance required by the Science of Reading. The speakers discuss how they integrate foundational skills with language comprehension to support the whole child. By ensuring students have equitable access to rich text, these leaders are preparing students not just for tests, but for life.
Join us to learn how you can replicate this success and drive exponential reading growth in your district. Register now!
