What a Sold A Story Discussion Guide Actually Is
A Sold A Story Discussion Guide is simply a structured set of questions and activities designed to help educators, parents, or book clubs engage with Emily Hanford's reporting on the science of reading. These guides break down the podcast series and accompanying book into digestible conversation points. They usually cover topics like three-cueing, phonics instruction, decodable texts, and why so many kids are struggling with reading despite decades of reform efforts. I put together a few of these guides for a school district last year, and the first thing I learned was that people rarely read the whole book. They consume the podcast on their commute. The discussion guide needs to account for that gap without being condescending about it.
Sold A Story Discussion Guide
The most useful guides follow a specific structure. They open with context-setting questions that establish shared baseline knowledge, move into content reflection questions tied to specific episodes or chapters, then transition into action-oriented prompts that push participants toward concrete changes in practice. I structure mine around four main sections: understanding the problem, examining the evidence, identifying local practices, and committing to next steps. Here is what the sections typically look like in practice.
Setting Up the Conversation
Start with two or three low-stakes questions that get people talking without requiring them to have memorized every detail. Something like asking what their earliest memories of learning to read were, or what terminology they have heard in their professional or personal lives around reading instruction. This surfaces assumptions early. You will be surprised how often someone mentions "balanced literacy" or "reading windows" without anyone correcting them, and those terms matter because they signal which instructional philosophies have shaped the group. Episode 1 of Hanford's series covers the basics of how children learn to read and why three-cueing is problematic. Discussion questions here should focus on what surprised participants and what evidence landed for them. Episode 2 moves into the history of the reading wars. This is where conversations tend to get uncomfortable because people realize the approaches they use were not neutral decisions. Have participants identify which era or debate position they most closely align with and why. Episode 3 covers what works in the classroom. Good questions here ask people to compare their current materials against what the research says, not just whether they feel it works. I ran a session once where someone pulled out her class set of leveled readers and asked directly whether they violated any of the principles Hanford described. That was the moment the whole room shifted from abstract debate to actual inventory of their own shelves. Factor that kind of practical reckoning into your guide design.
Action Planning
This is where most discussion guides fail. They end with vague prompts like "reflect on your practice" and call it a day. Instead, build in a commitment step. Ask each participant to write down one specific change they will make within the next thirty days. Not a philosophy shift. One change. Maybe it is replacing a particular leveled reader unit with a decodable text sequence. Maybe it is auditing their phonics scope and sequence for gaps. Maybe it is attending a workshop on the Science of Reading. Have them pair up and share their commitment with someone else in the room. That simple accountability step increases follow-through significantly compared to writing it down alone.
Common Pitfalls in Running These Discussions
The biggest issue I encounter is that participants come in either fully convinced or fully defensive, and neither extreme produces useful dialogue. The convinced group tends to treat the discussion as a confirmation event rather than an examination of their own practice. The defensive group hears the material as an attack on their profession and shuts down. You need to establish ground rules at the start that make it clear the goal is not to assign blame but to understand what the research says and decide what to do with that information. Another practical problem is time. A thorough discussion of all three episodes takes about three to four hours minimum. If you only have an hour, pick one episode and go deep rather than skimming all of them. I learned this the hard way when a district tried to cram everything into a single professional development day and nobody retained anything substantial. The guides also need to acknowledge that not every claim in Sold a Story is universally accepted in the research community. Some reading researchers push back on certain interpretations. A good discussion guide includes a brief note about ongoing debates rather than presenting Hanford's reporting as the final word. This keeps people who are more academically inclined from tuning out and gives permission for nuanced conversation.
Where to Find Existing Guides
Several organizations have published their own Sold A Story Discussion Guides for free. The Reading League has one that is well-structured and research-aligned. Scholastic published a companion guide that leans more toward practical classroom application. Some state education departments have also released versions adapted for their specific contexts. These are all solid starting points, but the best results come from adapting whichever guide you use to fit your specific audience. A guide designed for classroom teachers looks very different from one designed for parents or school board members. If you are creating your own, I recommend using the existing guides as templates rather than building from scratch. They have already done the work of identifying the right questions. Your value add is in tailoring the language, examples, and action steps to your particular group.
