To the Classroom: Conversations with Researchers & Educators – Détails, épisodes et analyse

My guest today is Dr. Leigh Patel who is a transdisciplinary scholar whose research focuses on both the ways schooling delivers inequities and how education can be a tool for liberation. She is the author of Decolonizing Educational Research. We’ll be discussing an essay she published last fall on decolonizing.net. In the second part of the episode I’m joined by my colleague Shawna Coppola, author of the new book Literacy For All.

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For a transcript and more information about the podcast and host Jennifer Serravallo: www.jennniferserravallo.com/podcast

Read Dr. Patel's Essay here.

Learn more about Shawna's book here.

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About Dr. Leigh Patel:

Dr. Leigh Patel is an interdisciplinary researcher, educator, writer, and is the Associate Dean for Equity and Justice in Education at the University of Pittsburgh. She works extensively with societally marginalized youth and teacher activists. Patel is a recipient of the June Jordan Award for scholarly leadership and poetic bravery in social critique and is a national board member of Education for Liberation, a long-standing organization dedicated to transformative education for and by youth of color. She is the author of Youth Held at the Border and Decolonizing Educational Research. Connect with her on Twitter at @lipatel.

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Today’s guest is the brilliant Zaretta Hammond, author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. We’ll talk about the science behind her recommended “six core design principles” that she calls “culturally responsive brain rules”. Later, I’m joined by my colleague Jerry Maraia for a continued conversation about practical takeaways. 

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To learn more about Jennifer Serravallo: www.jenniferserravallo.com
To read a transcript of this episode: www.jenniferserravallo.com/podcast
Learn more about Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond's book

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Zaretta Hammond is a former classroom English teacher who has been doing instructional design, school coaching, and professional development around the issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive teaching for the past 18 years.  She teaches as a lecturer at St. Mary’s College’s Kalmanovitz School of in Moraga, California.

In addition to consulting and professional development, she has been on staff at national education reform organizations, including the National Equity Project and the former Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC).  She has trained instructional coaches in reading development, especially targeted at students of color and English learners.  She has also designed national seminars such as the three-day Teaching with A Cultural Eye series for teachers and school leaders. She is regularly invited to present at regional and national conferences. She has authored articles that have appeared in publications such as Phi Delta Kappan.

Along with a focus on culturally responsive teaching, Ms. Hammond has a strong research agenda around literacy, vocabulary development, and equity. She has designed culturally responsive tutor training programs aimed at volunteer reading tutors for a variety of non-profit organizations. She currently designing a literacy program to accelerate low reading skills among high school students. She holds a Masters in Secondary English Education.

She also writes the popular ready4rigor.com blog.  Zaretta is the proud parent of two young adult children, both of whom she taught to read before they went to school. She resides in Berkeley, CA with her husband and family. 

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My guest today is Dr. Elizabeth Sulzby whose research focus is on early language and literacy development in Pre-Kindergarten. She talks about research studies she did with preschoolers in NYC years ago where teachers do repeated readings of storybooks—even those with complex language and story structure—and study children’s rereadings and retellings. These studies formed the basis for her emergent reading classification scheme. We also talk a bit about emergent writing development in prekindergarten and its parallels to reading development. Later, I’m joined by my colleagues Gina Dignon and bilingual educator Clarisa Leal for a conversation about practical takeaways for young children and multilingual learners.

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Read a full transcript of this episode and learn more about Jennifer Serravallo.

AccessEmergent Literacy: Writing and Reading

More on Dr. Sulzby’s KLP Literature Program

The Reading Strategies Book 2.0

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More about this episode’s guest:

Elizabeth Sulzby is best known for her pioneering work in emergent literacy. Prior to coming to the University Michigan in 1986, Sulzby was associate professor with tenure at Northwestern University. During 1996-97, she was a visiting professor at Leiden University, the Netherlands, where she collaborates with A.G. Bus and Marinus H. Van IJzendoorn in studies of attachment and emergent literacy. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and her M.Ed. from the College of William and Mary. She did post-B.A. study in philosophy at Harvard University after receiving her B.A. in philosophy and English from Birmingham-Southern College. 

Sulzby is the author, with W. H. Teale, of Emergent literacy: Writing and Reading, and has published her research on children's emergent reading and writing development in numerous journals.  Her studies of emergent bookreading and emergent writing have been conducted with diverse groups of children aged 2-7, including African American, Spanish-English bilingual immigrant, Appalachian, and European American children.

Research in emergent literacy has led Sulzby in a number of related directions. She has studied the transition from emergent to conventional literacy, designing techniques for assessing literacy from toddlers to early elementary grades in a manner consistent with emergent literacy insights. Her studies, with Bus, van IJzendoorn, Teale, and Kaderavek have bridged the parent-child intervention studies and children's independent emergent readings. 

Her research has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, NIE/OERI, the Research Foundation of NCTE, and by various computer and software companies, including IBM, Apple Computer, and Jostens. Sulzby is a Fellow in the APA and NCRLL and has served on many editorial and research review boards. Recently, she served on OERI's advisory group for a center for early literacy agenda, NCEE's New Standards Primary Literacy Panel and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council's Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). 

Special thanks to Alex Van Rose for audio editing this episode. 

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My guests today are Dr. Haeny Yoon and Dr. Lalitha Vasudevan, researchers who study play in early childhood and adolescence. We talk about the many benefits of play, the role of adults in setting up and facilitating play, and ways that play supports conceptual knowledge development as well as reading and writing skills. Later, I’m joined by colleagues Emily Strang-Campbell and Gina Dignon, as well as longtime friend Alison Porcelli, former teacher and school administrator and now a district coach, who is a co-author of two practitioner resources: Purposeful Play and Boosting English Language Acquisition in Choice Time.  

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Read a full transcript of this episode and learn more about the show

More on The Practice of Listening to Children: The Challenges of Hearing Children Out in an Adult-Regulated World

Mariana Souto-Manning and Haeny Yoon, Rethinking Early Literacies: Reading and Rewriting Worlds

Follow Dr. Haeny Yoon @Haenyyoon

Follow Dr. Lalitha Vasudevan @Elemveee

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Dr. Haeny Yoon is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Curriculum & Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is recommitting herself to the intellectual capacity and power of teachers to create, (re)imagine, and forward public scholarship and social change. As a former elementary school educator, she has always believed that when given the space, teachers can be engaged citizens who interrupt racism and multiple exclusions inherent in school curriculum, educational policies, and teaching pedagogies. She engages in research that studies how children and teachers create spaces of play or aesthetic experiences where creativity, social relationships, and civic engagement take precedence over standardization and regulation. She lives in New York City with her husband Neal and gets inspired daily by her niece and nephew, Emmy and Max. 

Dr. Lalitha Vasudevan is Professor of Technology and Education in the Communication, Media, and Learning Technologies Design Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Over the past 20 years, she has explored the intersection of adolescent literacies, media and technologies, youth culture, and juvenile justice. She engages participatory, ethnographic, and multimodal methodologies to study how youth craft stories, represent themselves, and enact ways of knowing through their engagement with literacies, technologies, and media.

Lalitha has conducted a variety of studies with court-involved youth. She has also explored the pedagogical practices of inclusive and special education teachers, the literacy and identity practices of middle school adolescents inside classroom settings, and the multimodal literacy and media engagements of adolescent boys. Lalitha has co-edited two volumes that explore the intersections of youth, media, and education: Media, Learning, and Sites of Possibility and Arts, Media, and Justice: Multimodal Explorations with Youth (both published with Peter Lang), and is currently writing a book about education, multimodal play, and belonging in the lives of court-involved youth.

Special thanks to Alex Van Rose for audio editing this episode. 

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John Walker and Jan Wasowicz

Today’s episode is a double – I have two guests to teach us about a speech to print approach to spelling and phonics instruction. John Walker is the UK-based creator of Sounds-Write. Jan Wasowicz is the US-based creator of Spell Links. We’ll talk about the differences–and benefits–of using a speech to print approach. Later, I’m joined by colleagues Macie Kerbs and Rosie Maurantonio, as well as the author of We Do Writing, Leah Mermelstein, for a conversation about practical takeaways for the classroom. 

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Read a full transcript of this episode and learn more about the show at: https://www.jenniferserravallo.com/podcast 

Cognitive Load Theory

Miller’s Studies on Memory 

Speech to Print Approach

Sounds Write UK

SPELL-Links

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More about Dr. John Walker:
John is the founder and CEO of Sounds-Write and one of the co-authors of the programme.

John has been a qualified teacher, university lecturer and teacher trainer for over thirty years, teaching English language and literature in many different countries and settings.

He trains practitioners in Sounds-Write and promotes the Sounds-Write programme in schools and other educational institutions across the world.

John is an enthusiastic edu-blogger, who posts regularly on all aspects of literacy teaching at his site theliteracyblog.com.

More about Dr. Jan Wasowicz:
Dr. Jan Wasowicz has over 40 years of experience working with academically struggling students, and she specializes in assessment and intervention for K-12 students with language-based reading, writing, and spelling problems including dyslexia, dysgraphia, and other language-based learning disabilities. In addition to providing direct assessment and remediation services, she participates in school meetings to counsel parents and to advocate for the student to receive appropriate public-school services, including modification of the classroom language arts curriculum to meet the learning needs of the student. Dr. Wasowicz is frequently invited to speak on best practices for literacy assessment and instruction and has conducted countless professional development workshops for schools. She has held faculty positions at leading universities and clinical training programs including Northwestern University and Elmhurst College. Dr. Wasowicz is a certified speech-language pathologist and a Board Certified Specialist in Child Language licensed to practice in the states of Illinois and Florida and is a licensed professional educator with elementary and secondary endorsements from the IL State Teacher Certification. She is a SPELL-Links Certified Provider.

Special thanks to Alex Van Rose for audio editing this episode. 

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Today’s guest is Dr. Tim Rasinski. We’ll talk about his newest book, Artfully Teaching the Science of Reading, along with several of his recently published studies that offer ways to support students’ fluency development through the use of poems and Reader’s Theater. This conversation is packed with ideas you’ll be able to use right away. After my converstion with Dr. Rasinski, I’m joined by four of my colleagues – Darren, Lainie, Macie, and Gina – where we’ll share our responses, ideas, and further questions.

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For more information about Jennifer Serravallo, to read transcripts of any episode, or to learn about inviting Jen's colleagues to work in your school or district, visit her website: www.jenniferserravallo.com

For more information about Tim's Book, Artfully Teaching the Science of Reading, click here.

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About this episode's guest:

Timothy Rasinski is a professor of literacy education at Kent State University and director of its award winning reading clinic. He has written over 200 articles and has authored, co-authored or edited over 50 books or curriculum programs on reading education. He's published numerous best-selling books with Teacher Created Materials and Shell Education, and has also authored books for Scholastic. His scholarly interests include reading fluency and word study, reading in the elementary and middle grades, and readers who struggle. His research on reading has been cited by the National Reading Panel and has been published in journals such as Reading Research Quarterly, The Reading Teacher, Reading Psychology, and the Journal of Educational Research. Dr. Rasinski is the first author of the fluency chapter for the Handbook of Reading Research.

Dr. Rasinski served a three year term on the Board of Directors of the International Reading Association and was co-editor of The Reading Teacher, the world's most widely read journal of literacy education. He has also served as co-editor of the Journal of Literacy Research. Dr. Rasinski is past-president of the College Reading Association and he has won the A. B. Herr and Laureate Awards from the College Reading Association for his scholarly contributions to literacy education. In 2010, Dr. Rasinski was elected into the International Reading Hall of Fame.

Prior to coming to Kent State, Timothy Rasinski taught literacy education at the University of Georgia. He taught for several years as an elementary and middle school classroom and Title I teacher in Nebraska. Tim is a veteran of the US armed forces.


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Special thanks to Alex Van Rose for audio editing this episode.

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Today’s guests are Drs. Laura Steacy and Don Compton, researchers who explore and write about the skill Set for Variability. You’ll hear them talk about this new area of research which offers an explanation for how students self-correct pronunciations of words when reading, and may have interesting implications for how we learn to remember spellings of irregular words. After my interview, I’m joined by my colleagues Macie Kerbs and Lainie Powell for a discussion about takeaways for the classroom.

Learn more about Jennifer Serravallo and read a transcript of this episode.
Twitter @LMSteacy
Twitter @Don_Compton
The Self Teaching Hypothesis
Set for Variability

More about this episode's guests:

Dr. Laura Steacy is an assistant professor of SpEd and research faculty at the Florida Center for Reading Research. Her research interests include early reading development, early predictors of reading achievement, and interventions for students who have or are at-risk for reading disabilities. Prior to her doctoral studies, she was a classroom teacher with experience teaching grades K-6. Up to this point, her research interests have focused on three broad strands relating to identification and intervention for struggling readers: (1) modeling the stability of early reading subtypes of children at-risk for reading difficulties, (2) child- and item- factors that predict individual differences in word reading skills, and (3) future directions for interventions for children with and at-risk for reading difficulties. These strands serve her overarching goal of identifying and serving students with the highest needs in the area of reading.

Dr. Compton is Professor of Psychology at Florida State University/Florida Center for Reading Research. He was formerly Professor and Chair of Special Education and a John F. Kennedy Center Investigator at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. He earned a Ph.D. from Northwestern University's School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, with a specialization in learning disabilities. While working on his Ph.D., and for several years after its completion, he was employed as a learning disabilities resource teacher in Skokie, Illinois. Compton then worked for four years as an assistant professor in the department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He then accepted a NICHD post-doctoral research fellowship at the Institute for Behavior Genetics, University of Colorado. From there he accepted a position at Vanderbilt University that he held until the spring of 2015 when he transitioned to FCRR. He has over 75 peer-review publications and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Scientific Studies of Reading, and Exceptional Children. Compton is the past President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading and currently serves as associate-editor of Scientific Study of Reading.

Special thanks to Alex Van Rose for audio editing this episode.
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My guest today is Dr. Peng Peng, co-author of a recently-published meta-analysis that examined the role of strategy instruction with struggling readers in grades 3-12. The analysis sought to understand which strategies, and which strategy combinations, are most important to prioritize in a time-crunched intervention setting. Later, I’m joined by my colleague Elisha Li for a conversation about practical takeaways for the classroom. 

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Read a full transcript of this episode, and learn more about the show at https://www.jenniferserravallo.com/podcast

More about Peng Peng’s research on working memory

More on the Effectiveness of Multi Stratergy Reading

Dr. Kintsch’s ReadingComprehension Model

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More about Dr. Peng Peng:

Dr. Peng Peng's research aims to bridge cognitive psychology and special education. He is interested in embedding high-level cognitive skills training into academic instructions for children with severe learning difficulties. In particular, he has been working on projects to design instruction that can incorporate cognitive strategy, meta-cognition, and reading skills. Another line of his research is meta-analysis that examines reading and mathematics learning across cultures and languages. Currently, he is working on several meta projects to investigate the bidirectional relation (and mechanism) between general cognition and learning during development.

Dr. Peng Peng's work has been published in journals including Psychological Bulletin, Review of Educational Research, Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Educational Psychology Review, Learning and Individual Differences, Exceptional Children, Scientific Studies of Reading, Child Development Perspectives, Journal of Special Education, Learning Disability Quarterly, and Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. He is the recipient of 2018 Early Career Award from International Dyslexia Association, the associate editor of Reading and Writing, and serves on the editorial board of Psychological Bulletin, Review of Educational Research, Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Learning Disabilities, Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, and Annals of Dyslexia.

Special thanks to Alex Van Rose for audio editing this episode. 

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My guests today are three authors of a recent article in The Reading Teacher about Maximizing Small Group Instruction: Dr. Kristin Conradi-Smith, Dr. Steve Amendum, and Tammy Williams. They’ll share essential recommendations for forming and conducting effective group lessons for readers. After our conversation, I’m joined by my colleagues Emily Strang-Campbell, Clarisa Leal, and Cristy Rauseo for a conversation about practical takeaways. 

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Learn more about Jennifer Serravallo and read a full transcript of this episode at www.jenniferserravallo.com

Dr. Steve Amendum on Twitter @SteveAmendum

Dr. Conradi-Smith on Twitter @KConradiSmith

Read the article Maximizing Small-Group Reading Instruction

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More about this episode’s guests:

Dr. Steve Amendum

Dr. Steve Amendum is a professor specializing in literacy education and Interim Director of the School of Education at the University of Delaware. He teaches courses related to literacy research, assessment, and instruction at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. His research areas include early reading intervention, literacy development and instruction for multilingual learners, and evidence-based classroom instruction, as well as professional development for teachers in each of these areas.

Dr. Conradi-Smith

Kristin Conradi Smith is an associate professor of reading education at William & Mary. She has taught both pre-service and in-service teachers, on various literacy topics, for over a decade at W&M, NC State, and the University of Virginia (where she completed her master's and doctoral degrees in Reading Education). In addition to two co-edited books, she has published over 25 articles on topics such as better understanding students who struggle with reading, text complexity, and reading motivation. Kristin also serves on three editorial review boards.

Special thanks to Alex Van Rose for audio editing this episode. 

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Today my guest is Dr. Margaret McKeown. We’ll start our conversation discussing vocabulary development and explicit vocabulary instruction, including how to choose words for instruction, how to teach words so students understand them deeply, and how to help students build connections between words. Our conversation then shifts to the Questioning the Author instructional intervention, which focuses on developing comprehension through conversation and can be used to foster independence and discussion amongst students. Later, I’m joined by my colleagues Gina Dignon and Rosie Maurantonio for a conversation about how we’ll bring what we learned to the classroom. 

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Read a full transcript of this episode and learn more about the show and Jennifer Serravallo at JenniferSerravallo.com

Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction 

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More about Dr. Margaret McKeown:

Margaret G. McKeown, PhD, is Clinical Professor Emerita of Education at the University of Pittsburgh. Before her retirement, she was also a Senior Scientist at the University's Learning Research and Development Center. Her work addresses practical, current problems that classroom teachers and their students face. She has conducted research in the areas of learning, instruction, and teacher professional development in reading comprehension and vocabulary. Dr. McKeown is a recipient of the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the International Literacy Association, is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, and was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame. She is coauthor of books including Bringing Words to Life, Second Edition; Creating Robust Vocabulary; Robust Comprehension Instruction with Questioning the Author; and Vocabulary Assessment to Support Instruction.

Special thanks to Alex Van Rose for audio editing this episode. 

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