Reading Road Trip

Season 3 wraps up with a jam-packed episode featuring Dr. Amanda VanDerHeyden. Kate and Amanda have a wide-ranging conversation about the science of learning and human behaviour - how do children learn new things? From the instructional hierarchy to incremental rehearsal, don't miss this fabulous episode!

Show Notes:

Curious about Amanda's insights into Kindergarten math instruction? Take a peek at the links she shared:

Paired partner practice

Independent practice

Teacher-directed whole-class error correction

This week Kate is joined by Dr. Amanda Nickerson for a candid conversation about supporting gifted and highly advanced readers. Don't miss this episode that highlights the value of advanced decoding and spelling instruction for skilled readers!

Dr. Andrea Fraser joins Kate to chat about her systems change journey: first in a board central team role, shifting her district's literacy instruction to structured literacy, and then preparing preservice teachers to teach with a structured literacy approach. Tune in to hear her insights on bridging the gap between research and practice at the district level and in higher education!

The Basics of Decoding and Spelling Instruction is a low-cost, asynchronous online course offered by IDA Ontario. Students in Canadian education, EA, or SLP programs, as well as educators working in First Nation schools, can receive free access here.

IDA Ontario partners with Dyslexia Canada to develop ONlit.org, a free website designed to support educators with the revised Ontario Language curriculum. Don't miss the most recent resource - a free embedded picture mnemonic set!

Kate welcomes Dr. Marc Joanisse for a discussion about the neurobiology of dyslexia and other comorbid disorders, including ADHD and DLD. 

Dr Marc Joanisse is a professor at the University of Western Ontario in the Department of Psychology and the Western Institute for Neuroscience. His research examines the cognitive and brain basis of reading dyslexia and developmental language disability in children, as well as typical reading and language and development. His research team at the Language Reading and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab uses a multimodal approach, including eye tracking, EEG and MRI. His research in dyslexia focuses on better understanding the links between poor reading and spoken language and phonology, and the comorbidities of dyslexia with other kinds of learning disorders like DLD and ADHD.

Stay up to date on research and upcoming studies from Marc's lab:

Language, Reading and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab Facebook page and website

Curious about evidence-based instruction for older readers? This week, Kate welcomes Dr. Heidi Anne Mesmer to discuss strategies for helping older readers decode big words and tackle complex texts, focusing on syntactic features like connectives and anaphora to improve text comprehension.

Heidi Anne is the author of several great books, including Big Words for Young Readers: Teaching Kids in Grades K to 5 to Decode - and Understand - Words with Multiple Syllables and Morphemes, and Teaching Skills for Complex Text: Deepening Close Reading in the Classroom. Kate and Heidi Anne also discussed a new article, Time in Text: Differentiating Instruction for Intermediate Students Struggling with Word Recognition.

Find Heidi Anne on twitter at @haemesmer.

Dr. Claude Goldenberg joins us this week. Don't miss this engaging conversation about reading instruction for multilingual students - and keep listening to the end to learn about Claude's real-life road trips inspired by a John Steinbeck book!

Claude is the Nomelini and Olivier professor of education emeritus at Stanford University. A native of Argentina, his areas of research and publication centred on promoting academic achievement among language minority students, particularly those from Spanish-speaking backgrounds.

In the episode, Claude mentioned his work on the National Literacy Panel, an article in Reading Research Quarterly, and his own road trip adventures inspired by John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley:

Kate welcomes Meredith and David Liben for a candid conversation on reading comprehension. The Libens walk through effective instruction to help students understand what they read - from close reading to structured journals, they share practical tips to support comprehension!

The Libens are the authors of Know Better Do Better: Teaching the Foundations So Every Child Can Read, and the newly released Know Better, Do Better: Comprehension: Fueling the Reading Brain With Knowledge, Vocabulary, and Rich Language.

Kate mentions the Matthew effect, a phenomenon coined by Dr. Keith Stanovich where good readers enjoy reading, read more, and develop stronger reading skills. Struggling readers avoid reading, making the gap between skilled and weak readers widen over time. Access this influential paper here.

The Read Aloud Project, mentioned by David, is a repository of lesson plans for rich read alouds of complex books.

Join us this week for a chat with parent educator Maya Payne Smart. Kate and Maya walk through clear, actionable steps to empower parents to support their child's language and literacy development.

Maya is the author of Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six. It is excellent - well-researched, clear, and parent-friendly - and even a great read for teachers, too!

Eager to learn more? Maya's website is a treasure trove of resources for parents and educators. From book recommendations to tips to build language and literacy, don't miss it.

Maya recommended the picture books The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read and An Inconvenient Alphabet: Ben Franklin & Noah Webster's Spelling Revolution.

This week, Kate welcomes fellow podcaster Anna Geiger from The Measured Mom. As two teachers who have shifted from balanced literacy to structured literacy, this episode is filled with candid discussion as Kate and Anna highlight the biggest surprises they encountered along the way!

Anna is the CEO of The Measured Mom, host of Triple R Teaching, and the author of the soon-to-be released book, Reach All Readers: Using the Science of Reading to Transform Your Literacy Instruction.

Show Notes:

Season 3 of Reading Road Trip kicks off with a candid conversation between literacy greats: Dr. Anita Archer and Dr. Sonia Cabell.

Anita and Sonia recorded this episode at the 2024 Literacy & Learning Conference. Their conversation is both thoughtful and lighthearted - we hope you will enjoy!

Show Notes:

Sonia is a co-author of the new book Strive-for-Five Conversations: A Framework That Gets Kids Talking to Accelerate Their Language Comprehension and Literacy

Anita is a co-author of the legendary text Explicit Instruction: Effective and Efficient Teaching

All About Words: Increasing Vocabulary in the Common Core Classroom by Tanya Wright and Susan Neuman is a book both Sonia and Anita discussed

Anita mentioned the research on Direct Instruction. This is summarized in the book All Students Can Succeed: A Half Century of Research on the Effectiveness of Direct Instruction

Kate brought up a document Anita wrote on scaffolding reading comprehension

Check out Kate's new home office setup - complete with a set of Archerisms!