This week, Kate Winn welcomes Irish educator and researcher Dr. Jen O’Sullivan to explore how young children develop the ability to make inferences and how educators can explicitly support this essential skill. From playful, practical strategies to research-backed insights, this episode is packed with ideas to bring inferencing to life in the early years. Mentioned in the Episode: The Game by Henry Charles Ten Bears and Shoshannah Greene RAND Reading Study Group (2002) Oakhill and Cain (2012) st...
Jul 07, 2025•49 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Buckle up - it's the Season 4 premiere of Reading Road Trip ! Host Kate Winn kicks off the new season with Dr. Leslie Laud of thinkSRSD for a lively and practical conversation about transforming writing instruction. From kindergarten to high school, discover how this evidence-based approach is scaling across classrooms, building confidence, reducing teacher workload, and aligning beautifully with Canadian curricula. Links Mentioned in this Episode: Cedar School Decodables by Strong Nations Publi...
Jun 30, 2025•41 min•Season 4Ep. 1
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!
Jun 12, 2025•3 min
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 Lan...
Jan 11, 2025•34 min•Season 3Ep. 11
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: Skills for screening, by grade level and time of year Kindergarten classwide...
Sep 02, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 3Ep. 10
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!
Aug 26, 2024•57 min•Season 3Ep. 9
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....
Aug 19, 2024•43 min•Season 3Ep. 8
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 Rea...
Aug 12, 2024•46 min•Season 3Ep. 7
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 Ski...
Aug 05, 2024•58 min•Season 5Ep. 6
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 Span...
Jul 29, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 3Ep. 5
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...
Jul 22, 2024•58 min•Season 3Ep. 4
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 rec...
Jul 15, 2024•38 min•Season 3Ep. 3
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: Em...
Jul 08, 2024•43 min•Season 3Ep. 2
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 leg...
Jul 01, 2024•52 min•Season 3Ep. 1
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!
Jun 14, 2024•3 min•Season 3Ep. 1
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 Lit...
Mar 04, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 10
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 effecti...
Feb 26, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 9
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...
Feb 19, 2024•45 min•Season 2Ep. 8
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 ...
Feb 12, 2024•45 min•Season 2Ep. 7
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 . I...
Feb 05, 2024•45 min•Season 2Ep. 6
In this week's episode, Kate welcomes Kareem Weaver for a candid conversation about the role of literacy in equity, and some myths and misconceptions as strive for the goal of literacy for all. Kareem Weaver is a co-founder and executive director of FULCRUM and is also the Oakland NAACP's Second Vice President and Chair of its Education Committee. Kareem's advocacy is featured in the film The Right to Read . Mr. Weaver was an award-winning teacher and administrator. He has undergraduate degrees ...
Jan 29, 2024•58 min•Season 2Ep. 5
This week, Kate chats with Dr. Deb Glaser about the second edition of Next STEPS for Literacy Instruction, co-authored with Dr. Susan Smartt. Kate and Deb unpack how to use valid and reliable assessments to shape effective literacy instructions, particularly through the Next STEPS framework: Set-up, Teach, Engage, Practice, and Show You Know. Deb's knowledge and experience in structured literacy is both broad and deep: she is the author of the Reading Teacher's Top Ten Tools online course, Morph...
Jan 22, 2024•49 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Kate welcomes Catherine Shawana, a member of Wiikwemkoong unceded territory, for a candid discussion about her First Nation school's journey from balanced literacy to structured literacy, as well as a broader conversation about First Nations education. Catherine's passions are rooted in the foundation of building Anishnawbek identity and establishing a connection to Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being. She believes this strength-based identity work is necessary for all students to develo...
Jan 15, 2024•48 min•Season 2Ep. 3
This week, Kate is joined by Nancy Chapel Eberhardt to discuss all things syntax. A key element of language comprehension, equipping students with an understanding of syntax is key to supporting strong reading and writing skills! Take a listen to learn more about how syntax develops and how to best teach this domain of language. Nancy Chapel Eberhardt is the coauthor of Sortegories 3.0 , a web-based app designed to provide practice for essential early literacy skills. She serves as a member of t...
Jan 08, 2024•57 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Season 2 of Reading Road Trip kicks off with Emily Hanford! Join Kate Winn to get the inside scoop on Emily's reporting work on the science of reading, including the incredibly popular podcast Sold a Story . Emily unpacks her journey into reporting on literacy instruction, how Sold a Story was made, and how she responds to critics. Show Notes: Emily's articles and podcasts through APM Reports have shone a light on reading instruction, and have catalyzed conversations and changes to literacy inst...
Jan 01, 2024•50 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Buckle up - Reading Road Trip is back for a second 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!
Dec 12, 2023•3 min
In the Season 1 finale, you get to ask the questions! Kate Winn and Una Malcolm answer listener questions, sharing their thoughts on sound spelling walls to structured literacy in older grades. Stay tuned to the end for the answer to the most common question - will there be a Season 2 of Reading Road Trip? Show Notes: In the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation, we hope to amplify the work of an Indigenous artist in each episode by recommending a picture book. This week's book recommendation is Sh...
Sep 04, 2023•47 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Kate hosts Diana Burchell for a conversation about language learners. Is structured literacy appropriate for multilingual learners? Can early screening and intervention support students in French Immersion? What does research tell us about the language and literacy development of refugees from Syria? Diana is a former high school French Immersion teacher, and is now a doctoral candidate in Developmental Psychology and Education at the University of Toronto. She can be found on Twitter and at her...
Aug 28, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 9
This week, Kate is joined by Dr. Carolyn Strom for a conversation about the reading brain. What are the neural underpinnings of how students learn to read? How can research in this field help us in the classroom? Carolyn is a clinical assistant professor of Early Childhood Literacy at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture Education and Human Development. Her work is focused on bridging the divide between scientific research and instructional practices. You can find her on Twitter and at her website...
Aug 21, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Kate welcomes Dr. Daryl Michel for a candid discussion on literacy coaching and PD. As we look to the beginning of a new school year, and as many systems plan structured literacy teacher PD, how can we create meaningful professional learning opportunities that lead to strong student and teacher outcomes? Dr. Daryl Michel is the founder of Be A Change, LLC, and a lifelong educator who is passionate about engaging with others to learn, teach, and inspire while appreciating and advocating for voice...
Aug 14, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 7
