Reading Road Trip – Details, episodes & analysis

Buckle up - Reading Road Trip is back for a fourth season!

Join classroom teacher Kate Winn for a jam-packed season featuring fabulous guests. From researchers and authors to educators and practitioners, they're all sharing practical ideas that can be implemented now in your class, school, board or district!

For this surprise bonus episode, buckle up and join Kate Winn and Una Malcolm for a candid conversation about all things reading! Kate and Una share their "road bumps" and "refuels" along the road to reading for all. 

Stay tuned for Season 4 of Reading Road Trip this summer where we'll bring another carload of fabulous guests along for the ride.

Keen to explore some of the resources Kate and Una mentioned in the episode?

• Kate's UFLI in Ontario Kindergarten document, co-authored with Dr. Holly Lane and Dr. Valentina Contesse
• Season 3 Episode 1 of Reading Road Trip featured Dr. Anita Archer and Dr. Sonia Cabell
• SISEP and NIRN host the Active Implementation Formula Framework Modules
• IDA's Perspectives on Language and Literacy has an issue focused on implementation
• Dr. Stephanie Stollar has an active Facebook page and leads the Reading Science Academy
• ONlit's Screening: The Reel Deal is a series of short videos addressing common questions about early reading screening
• Dr. Diana Burchell was a guest on Season 1 Episode 9, and Dr. Steve Graham joined us for Episode 9 of Season 2
• Mount St. Joseph University offers access to their library database through the Center for Reading Science membership program
• Ontario teachers - the wonderful Jenni vanRees made this brief video showing how to navigate the OCT Library

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:

• Emily Hanford's reporting, including her article At a Loss for Words, was key to Anna's structured literacy journey. Catch Emily's season 2 episode of Reading Road Trip, too!
• Dr. Mark Seidenberg's book, Language at the Speed of Sight, provides comprehensive insight into how students learn to read, challenging instructional practices that aren't aligned with this research
• Ready for the tables to be turned? Anna interviewed Kate on Triple R Teaching with an episode focusing on structured literacy in kindergarten

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!

   

Buckle up - Reading Road Trip is back for a third season!

Join classroom teacher Kate Winn for a jam-packed season featuring fabulous guests. From researchers and authors to educators and advocates, they're all sharing practical ideas that can be implemented now in your class, school, board or district!

Season 2 of Reading Road Trip closes out with a conversation with Dr. Jennifer Buckingham. Kate and Jennifer dig into reading science - what do teachers really need to know? From syllable types to comprehension strategies, linguistic terms to cognitive science, this episode distinguishes between what is a "need to know" and what is "nice to know." 

Dr. Jennifer Buckingham is the director of strategy and senior research fellow at MultiLit, and is the founder and director of the Five from Five Literacy Project.

Show Notes:

• Jennifer's research report, Need to Know or Nice to Know, explores many of the topics discussed in the episode
• Kate also mentioned Jennifer's blog Don't Discard Comprehension Strategies
• Jennifer brought up Dr. Daniel Willingham's blog, Can Children be Taught to Comprehend What They Read?

In this week's episode, Kate chats with Dr. Steve Graham about all things writing. Dr. Graham highlights the importance of handwriting and spelling, and unpacks evidence-based strategy instruction to build strong writers.

Show Notes: 

• Steve is an author and editor of many books, including Best Practices in Writing Instruction and Writing Better
• Steve and his co-author Dolores Perin explore many of the evidence-based strategies discussed in this episode in Writing Next, a meta-analysis on effective writing instruction
• Learn more about Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) at thinkSRSD, or with the books Powerful Writing Strategies for All Students or Building Comprehension in Adolescents

Kate chats with Dr. Jack Fletcher this week, unpacking all things dyslexia: Risk factors and prevention, dyslexia vs dysteachia, instructional tips, wait-to-fail, and dyslexia myths and misconceptions.

Show Notes:

Learn more about some of the articles Jack mentioned:

• The importance of early reading intervention (Lovett et al., 2017)
• Problems with dyslexia identification models (Scientific American)
• Helping children with significant reading problems (Vaughn & Fletcher, 2023)
• Identifying and teaching students with significant reading problems - including 18 common misunderstandings of dyslexia (Vaughn & Fletcher, 2020-2021)
• The role of instruction in learning to read: Preventing reading failure in at-risk children (Foorman et al., 1998)
• The Good Behaviour Game 
• Anxiety and reading (Grills-Taquechel et al., 2012)

Kate chats with Clara Fiorentini this week. Tune in to explore novels in the classroom: how class novel studies fit into structured literacy, how complex text can be scaffolded, using "read-alikes" to choose texts, and avoiding the perils of "extractitis" - don't miss this thoughtful conversation about chapter books!

Clara is the president of the Literacy Association of Ireland and a lecturer in initial teacher education at Marino Institute of Education. She is wrapping up her Ph.D. research on current trends in Irish preschool literacy practice. Catch Clara at her blog, on Instagram, and on Twitter.

Show Notes:

• Clara talks about the Matthew effect, an influential paper from Dr. Keith Stanovich that highlights that with early reading, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Take a look at the open-access paper here.
• Dr. Tim Shanahan has several blogs about the importance of using complex text in reading instruction.
• Clara mentions Reading for Pleasure from the Open University - see more here.
• The Science of Reading Comprehension Instruction, an article by Nell Duke, Alessandra Ward and David Pearson, can be found here.
• Learn more about book tastings on Clara's blog.

This week Kate talks to Kristin Conradi Smith, Tammy Williams, and Ellen Frackelton about research-based comprehension strategies for the classroom, including considerations for text selection and preparation, common pitfalls to avoid and “use it tomorrow” ideas. Bottom line: no more strategy of the week!

Show Notes:

• Kristin, Ellen and Tammy co-wrote the open-access article "No More Strategy of the Week": Considerations for Connecting Comprehension Instruction Back to the Book. Find it here.
• In this PaTTAN webinar, Hugh Catts discusses the multidimensional nature of reading comprehension sharing how educators need to frame reading comprehension and provide meaningful instruction.
• Dr. Catts also wrote this article for American Educator, Rethinking How to Promote Reading Comprehension
• Kristin mentions this video from Reading Rockets, where Dr. Sharon Walpole walks through comprehension as building meaning and not finding the correct answer
• Bookworms is a free set of instructional resources mentioned in the episode
• Ellen brings up this blog post by Dr. Tim Shanahan, where he highlights that "reading comprehension should be taught with texts that are worth reading, texts from which we want students to gain knowledge."