In this special episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan Lambert is joined by Claude Goldenberg, Ph.D., professor of education at Stanford University, to answer questions from our listener mailbag. Together they address a wide range of topics facing today’s educators, such as what to do when your school implements conflicting materials, how to support students that are two or three grades levels behind, best practices for teaching multilingual learners, and more!

Show notes:

• Connect with Claude Goldenberg:
  • Substack: https://claudegoldenberg.substack.com/
• Resources
  • Literacy Foundations for English Learners, A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction by Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, Ed.D.
• Join our community Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/scienceofreading
• Connect with Susan Lambert: www.linkedin.com/in/susan-lambert-b1512761/
• Have a burning question? Submit at amplify.com/sormailbag

Quotes:

“Incrementalism is just not going to serve our purpose unless you want to keep things as they are. And I hate to say this, Susan…some people wouldn't mind leaving things as they are. And we can't do that, and we can't do it incrementally. We've got to really move, like last year.” —Claude Goldenberg

“You’ve got to understand how [two programs] fit together and what the purpose is. Giving teachers materials that are literally incoherent and don't fit with each other is not the answer.” —Claude Goldenberg

“We need to have a system ... using the best knowledge that we have systematically throughout the state, throughout the country, with systems that pick up kids who are at risk and don't let them fail.” —Claude Goldenberg

Episode timestamps*
02:00 The latest from Claude Goldenberg
04:00 Literacy and the urgency of now
7:00 Question 1: What about the pendulum swing?
15:00 Question 2: What to do when your school implements conflicting materials?
21:00 Question 3: Why are running records and leveled texts discouraged?
22:00 Decoding v.s. Word recognition
29:00 Question 4: How do we support kids that are two or three grade levels behind?
30:00 Dyslexia and the importance of universal screening
35:00 Question 5: How would you increase reading proficiency in a school in which nearly every student is a multilingual learner?
45:00 Question 6: How do you apply the science of reading to an ELL student in middle school that doesn’t yet know the language?
48:00 Question 7: Is it best practice for bilingual students who are being taught to decode and encode in English and Spanish to be screened in English and Spanish?
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute

In this episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan Lambert is joined by Young-Suk Grace Kim, a professor at University of California at Irvine's School of Education. Dr. Kim begins by defining a theoretical model, outlining its value to teachers as it pertains to literacy instruction. She describes her own interactive dynamic literacy (IDL) model, which seeks to more fully explain reading and writing connections. Dr. Kim emphasizes how reading and writing function as a powerful and closely related system, and examines how this system interacts with developmental phases, linguistic grain size, and reading and writing difficulties, including dyslexia. After navigating the complexities of this conversation, Susan ends the episode by sharing her unique insights and takeaways from her time with Dr. Kim.

Show notes:

• Connect with Young-Suk Grace Kim:
  • X: @YoungSukKim19
• Resources
  • Read: Enhancing Reading and Writing Skills through Systematically Integrated Instruction
  • Read: Reading and Writing Relations Are Not Uniform: They Differ by the Linguistic Grain Size, Developmental Phase, and Measurement
• Join our community Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/scienceofreading
• Connect with Susan Lambert: www.linkedin.com/in/susan-lambert-b1512761/
• Want to hear more of Dr. Kim? Join us for our upcoming Spring Science of Reading Summit where she’ll be giving the keynote address on the relationship between reading, writing, and language. Save your spot: amplify.com/springsorsummit

Quotes:

“Lower order skills are necessary for higher order skills; that means skills and knowledge have a series of causal effects. So if you flip it the other way, any challenges or weaknesses in lower order skills, it's going to have a series of impacts on higher order skills.” —Young-Suk Grace Kim, Ed.D.

“Theory is an explanation about how things work. …It's a structured framework, a mental framework, that helps us explain, and predict, and understand phenomena.” —Young-Suk Grace Kim, Ed.D.

“If an educator goes to a professional development and learns about something like phoneme awareness…but you don't have a framework in which to attach it, you can sort of go down a rabbit trail on one thing instead of thinking about how it relates to the whole.” —Susan Lambert

Episode timestamps*
03:00 Introduction: Who is Young-Suk Grace Kim?
05:00: Defining a theoretical model
07:00 Origins of Young-Suk’s model
08:00 Interactive Dynamic Literacy Model Overview
14:00 Why interactive and why dynamic
15:00 Hierarchical relations between low order skills and high order skills
18:00 Breaking down “Interactive”
19:00 Young-Suk’s ideal classroom
20:00 Breaking down “Dynamic”
21:00 Linguistic grain size
22:00 Why linguistic grain size matters for teachers
26:00 Why word reading and spelling are more strongly related than reading comprehension and writing composition
29:00 Dynamic relationship of developmental phases
30:00 Measuring reading and writing
33:00 Interactive Dynamic Literacy Model summarized
35:00 Understanding reading and writing difficulty, including dyslexia
42:00 Dr. Kim’s Final Thoughts
44:00 Susan’s takeaways from the conversation
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute

In this episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan Lambert is joined by Adrea Truckenmiller, Ph.D., associate professor of special education and school psychology at Michigan State University. Their conversation starts with defining academic language and breaking it down on the level of the word, the sentence, and full text. Adrea then touches on topics such as informational vs. narrative text structure, morphological complexity, and effective writing assessment. She also gives advice on how to implement explicit instruction on informational text and academic language, and details a few examples of what it can look like in the classroom. Adrea ends by discussing her passion for special education and encouraging educators to get involved.

Show notes:

• Resources
  • Read: “Academic language use in middle school informational writing”
  • Read: “Academic language and the challenge of reading for learning about science”
  • Read: “Writing to read: Parallel and independent contributions of writing research to the Science of Reading”
  • Read: “What is important to measure in sentence-level language comprehension?
  • Read: Making the Writing Process Work: Strategies for Composition and Self-Regulation
• Join our Facebook community group: www.facebook.com/groups/scienceofreading.
• Connect with Susan Lambert: www.linkedin.com/in/susan-lambert-b1512761/.

Quotes:

“ Academic language is really a new language for everyone to learn.” —Adrea Truckenmiller, Ph.D.

"When we're thinking about teaching academic vocabulary, it's not just one time around. Sometimes we have to layer that instruction for deeper and deeper and deeper meaning.” —Susan Lambert

Episode timestamps*
02:00 Introduction: Who is Adrea Truckenmiller?
07:00 Defining academic language
11:00 Differences in academic language at different levels: word, sentence, text.
12:00 Word level: morphological complexity
17:00 Sentence level
18:00 Connectives
21:00 Text level: Informational text structure vs narrative text structure
24:00 Reading research for middle schoolers
26:00 Writing assessment structure for middle school
32:00 What does this type of instruction look like in the classroom?
34:00 Importance of grades 4 & 5 to the development of informational reading and writing skills
35:00 Advice for teachers on teaching information reading and writing
39:00 Get involved in special education
*Timestamps are approximate