S9 E13: Empowering instruction through mental models, with Young-Suk Grace Kim, Ed.D.

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Young-Suk Grace Kim (00:00):
A lot of educators understand that
reading and writing arerelated, but I think as
educators, we need to havereally precise understanding
about it. So we need to have agood mental model about how
they're related and why they'rerelated.

Susan Lambert (00:19):
This is Susan Lambert and welcome to Science

of Reading (00:21):
The Podcast from Amplify. What is a theoretical
model and how can a theoreticalmodel be useful to
practitioners? That's at theheart of today's conversation
with Dr. Young-Suk Grace Kim, aformer classroom teacher who's
now a professor at the Schoolof Education at the University

(00:42):
of California at Irvine. Dr.
Kim has developed theinteractive dynamic literacy
model, all about how and whyreading and writing are
related. Throughout thisthree-part writing miniseries,
we've been building to thisepisode and we're now ready to
unpack Dr. Kim's model forexplaining the connection

(01:04):
between reading and writing. Aheads up. Dr. Kim is going to
use the analogy of a house todescribe the reading-writing
relationship. As she'llmention, there's actually a
great visual of this in one ofher papers, which we've linked
in the show notes. It's calledEnhancing Reading and Writing
Skills through SystematicallyIntegrated Instruction.

(01:27):
Consider checking that outbefore or while listening to
this conversation. Also, we'retrying out a brand new segment.
After I hang up with Dr. Kim,I'm going to briefly share some
of my biggest learnings andtakeaways from the
conversation. Stick arounduntil the end to hear that. Now
let's get to the conversation.

(01:49):
Well, I am so excited to haveyou join us on today's episode.
So I have here Dr. Young-SukGrace Kim. Thank you so much
for joining us, Young.

Well, thank you so much for having
me, ,

And we would love, before we dive into our
topic, which is going to bereally exciting and I think our
listeners are really going tolove it, I would love if you
could tell us a little bitabout your journey into
literacy and how you actuallymade it to be starting to think
about, you know, reading andwriting connections.

Sure. I was a classroom teacher in a
bilingual program in SanFrancisco back in the '90s, and
I noticed differences inchildren's language and reading
skills. And I got very curiousabout the different patterns
that I was noticing amongstudents. So I decided to study

(02:41):
this in a doctoral program witha focus on language and
literacy development. In termsof specifically reading and
writing connections, I workedon a reading development piece
and I also, concurrently waslooking at writing development
and it was very clear that theywere related, so I decided to

(03:02):
think deeply about it.

Hmm , that's awesome. What grade did you
teach when you were in theclassroom?

So I taught in high school and I
also taught , that was not abilingual program, but in the
bilingual program I taught insecond grade.

Oh, wow. That's great. . So really
aware of how this thing calledliteracy developed in second
grade.

Young-Suk Grace Ki (03:22):
Absolutely.
I mean, I taught also inkindergarten as well, it was
actually during the summertime,but definitely , in terms of my
elementary school teaching, itwas really primary grade
levels.

Mm- hmm . That's awesome.
It's really great to hear thosekinds of stories because we
don't always know, and ourlisteners don't always know
sort of your path to getting tothis research place. But
knowing that you've sat in thatseat of a classroom teacher,
particularly in the earlygrades , that's really
exciting. So thank you forsharing that. So you have
developed a really importantmodel representing reading and

(03:56):
writing connections. I lovethis model. I have learned so
much from the work that you'vedone with this. But before we
really talk about that model, Iwould love if you could help
our listeners understand what atheoretical model is, 'cause
that's what you have as atheoretical model. Help us
understand what that means andwhy these models are important.

Yeah, that's a really good question.
And I say this because youknow, many people do not see
the relevance of theory into, Iguess, day-to-day life. Simply
put, theory is an explanationabout how things work. If I say
it a little bit more formally,it's a structured framework, a

(04:39):
mental framework, that helps usexplain and predict and
understand phenomena. And inour case, it's phenomena at the
phenomena or how students learnto read, how they learn to
write.

Okay . And so these models are important. How
can teachers think about usingthese models then, or think
about these models?

Sure. So theories or theoretical models
matter because they offerinsights into the processes
operating in the writing andthe development, as well as the
factors that contribute to thedevelopment of reading and
writing skills, and/ordifficulties in development.

(05:22):
And teachers' understanding ofthis will empower them to make
decisions about instructionalapproaches, and that includes
assessment and instruction. Soalways, when I think about
theory, I think of a triangleof theory, assessment, and
instruction, because theoryinforms about what to assess,

(05:46):
what to teach, and how toteach, and how to assess.

Hmm . And then do they have a feedback loop in
there too? So I'm assuming...there's a ...

Absolutely.
Exactly. It's always two-waydirection. So theory informs
teaching and you know, teachingpractice also informs theory as
well. And also teaching andassessment informs each other
as well.

So I'm gonna take this back to your early
experiences. So, you said thatyou were noticing things about
reading and writing, you werelearning things about the
connection between reading andwriting. How does one actually,
or maybe how did you thinkabout, "Oh, this is a theory
that I'm gonna put into a modeland put on paper." How did that

(06:31):
happen for you?

Going back to my early experience of
teaching in a bilingualprogram, one thing that I
noticed was students'performance in L2, which was
English, right? For many ofthem , it was not for all, but
for many it was English. And itseemed that their L2 reading
and writing seemed to reallyrely on or as a function of

(06:56):
their L1 literacy skills. So Ithought, hmm, it seems that
they're related, but exactlyhow are they related and why
are they related? I was verycurious when it comes to
reading and writing relations.
I think we have to, actually,this will be really helpful if
I actually unpack the model alittle bit.

Perfect. So let's talk about this model.
And for our listeners, when youwere talking about L1 and L2,
that's first language andsecond language. Just to be
clear about that.

That's correct. Thank you, .

You're welcome.
And so your theoretical modelis called the dynamic
interactive model, is thatright?

It's actually interactive dynamic
literacy model.

, I got it backwards. Okay.

You got both components.

So we'll talk about the interactive dynamic
model. So, tell us all aboutthis model. How did you develop
it? Anything you wanna unpackwith this that you think is
important for us to understand?

Sure. So this is my effort to explain
reading and writingconnections. And , reading and
writing connections have beenrecognized before, and I think
it's also intuitive. Peoplekind of know that, oh, they're
related, but exactly how arethey related has not been

(08:16):
examined systematically orcomprehensively. So this is my
attempt to explain why readingand writing are related and how
they're related. Right? So interms of why, reading and
writing are related becausethey draw on shared component
skills and knowledge.
Essentially what that means isthat they draw on the same

(08:39):
skills. There's exception, butI'll go over that. So allow me
to go over skills and knowledgethat are shared across reading
and writing. And when I dothat, instead of listing them,
I'm kind of borrowing theanalogy of building a house.

(09:00):
Think about a house.

Okay.

And I published this, and I'll share
the publication, and solisteners can feel free to
download it as they listen tothis. So, imagine a house
figure, a house with twopillars supporting, right? The
roof is reading comprehensionand written composition. Right

(09:24):
underneath the roof, there's abeam, and the beam is text
reading fluency and textwriting fluency. And the beam
and the roof are supported bytwo pillars. One pillar is
lexical literacy. What I meanby lexical literacy, lexical
means word size, right? So thatincludes the ability to read

(09:47):
words. So that's word readingand the ability to spell words,
that's spelling, as well ashandwriting and keyboarding.
That's one pillar. And theother pillar is oral discourse.
By oral discourse, I meanlistening comprehension and
oral composition. It is ourability to listen. Right now,
listeners are listening, right?

(10:08):
The ability you listen tolisten and comprehend it, as
well as produce oral text,right? So there are two pillars
supporting text readingfluency, text writing fluency,
and reading comprehension andwritten composition. Now, let's
think about what skills supportthe lexical literacy pillar. So

(10:28):
the foundational stone , rightunderneath lexical literacy
pillar is what I callcode-related emerging literacy
skills. That includes knowledgeand awareness of orthography,
phonology and morphology. Soorthography includes our
knowledge and awareness ofletter names, letter sounds,

(10:52):
patterns that are allowed in aparticular writing system,
right? And phonology isphonological awareness, and
morphology is morphologicalawareness. So those are the
supporting skills for lexicalliteracy skills. Now let's turn
to supporting skills for alldiscourse, right? There's

(11:13):
variation in people's abilityto comprehend oral text as well
as produce. So what explainsthat, essentially? So one chunk
of skills is calledhigher-order cognition and
regulation. So by higher-ordercognition, that means our
ability to make inferences,understand multiple
perspectives—that'sperspective-taking and our

(11:34):
ability to reason, our abilityto set goals, monitor
ourselves, and self-reinforceour behaviors to achieve goals.
And then right underneath it iswhat I call foundational
language skills. And theyinclude our knowledge of
vocabulary words, sogrammatical knowledge, right?
So those support oraldiscourse. Now at the very

(11:58):
bottom there's more.

Oh, there's more. < Laugh.

Yes. The very bottom, if you wanna think
about a basement or something, , the very bottom of
the foundation of this house isdomain-general cognitive
skills, or some people call itexecutive functions. And they
include working memory,inhibitory and attentional
control, and shifting. And thehouse figure has two windows.

(12:24):
.

Wow.

I know. So reading and writing are
complex, so there's more,right? So between the
two pillars, imagine one windowthat's close to the lexical
literacy pillar. And that'ssocial-emotional aspects, and
that includes our motivation,our attitude, interest, and
self-concepts of efficacytowards reading and writing.

(12:50):
And another window that's closeto all discourse side is what I
call background knowledge. Andthat includes our knowledge
about content, world knowledge,cultural knowledge, and
discourse knowledge. So there'sa bunch . All these are
shared for reading and writing.

It's really interesting because, well,
first of all listeners, we willlink in the show notes a link
to this, so you can actuallyunpack this, and probably
re-listen to this segment withthe image in front of you. The
words that you chose for yourliteracy model, why interactive
and why dynamic?

Yeah. So in this model, things are
related to each other in a veryspecific way or systematically,
right? They're not just random.
These pieces that I just talkedabout and reading and writing
are not just randomly related,right? There's a very
systematic way they're related.
And the first one is, I call ithierarchical relations. That

(13:55):
means lower order, some skillsare lower order skills. And
other skills are higher orderskills and lower order skills
are necessary. And they are thefoundations for higher order
skills.

Can you give us an example of some of those
lower?

Absolutely.
So word reading and spellingare lower order literacy
skills, and they're necessaryfor higher order literacy
skills such as readingcomprehension and written
composition. They're necessaryand essential. hierarchical
relations apply to otherskills, right? Knowledge that

(14:30):
is important for reading andwriting. For example, think
about phonological awareness,autographic awareness,
morphological awareness. Theseare lower order skills that are
necessary for word reading andspelling. Another example is
vocabulary or a language skillthat's lower order language

(14:52):
skill and that's necessary forhigher order language skill
such as listening comprehensionand oral composition. So that's
hierarchical relations, right?
Things build on each other.

Mm-hmm .

This is important because one
consequence of hierarchycorrelations is that, you know,
because lower order skills arenecessary for higher order
skills, that means skills andknowledge have a series of kind
of causal effects. So if youflip it the other way, any

(15:29):
challenges or weaknesses inlower order skills, is gonna
have a series of impacts onhigher order skills. So let me
give you a very specificexample. So say for some reason
a student has challenges ordifficulties with the

(15:49):
phonological processing. Thatmeans that student is likely to
have difficulties in wordreading and spelling. If the
student experiencesdifficulties in word reading
and spelling, that's gonnaimpact their text reading
fluency and text writingfluency, and it's gonna
influence their readingcomprehension and written

(16:12):
composition.

Mm. Yes.

So you can think about like from the top
to bottom, difficulties andlower at the bottom, eventually
it's gonna trickle down to, Iguess up, to the reading
comprehension and writtencomposition.

And that's why they call foundational skills
foundational, right? Becauseyou can't build on a weak
foundation, you have to havethat strong.

Absolutely.
So foundational skills arenecessary for higher order
operations. So a lot of times,you know, people love talking
about higher order operationsbecause we want students to get
there. But we should notforget, without the
foundations, we cannot operateon at the high level.

Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm
. That's a greatpoint. I love that. Any other
ways that you wanna talk abouthow they're related?

Absolutely.
So now let's go back to thename, where the name ...
.

Maybe you'll help me get it in the right
order. .

So we'll start with the
interactive and we'll go to thedynamic. So interactive here
means bidirectional,essentially. So reading and
writing develop interactivelyor bidirectionally or
reciprocally mediated bylearning experiences. So, that

(17:32):
means reading developmentsupports writing development;
writing development supportsreading development. So that's
kind of where the nameinteractive comes in.

Mm . I like that. You also said it's
mediated by classroomexperience. Did you say that?

Learning experiences.

Learning experience. Okay. What do you
mean by that?

So as we develop reading skills, we go
through a reading process,right? And then we develop
reading skills. And thatinfluences writing development
and also, as you engage inwriting activities, writing
experiences that supportsreading development.

Okay. That makes sense. And I'm gonna just, you
know, make a little bit of aconnection here. So I would say
for the classroom, we should besaying, "Gone are the days when
we have a reading block andthen a writing block, because
we should be teaching these twothings in tandem." Is that
correct?

Absolutely.
So in my ideal classroom, right, we can talk more about this,
but in my ideal classroom we'llhave reading and writing
systematically integrated. Andthere'll be a portion of
instruction that's primarilyfocused on reading--the reading
process and skills that arenecessary for reading. And

(18:56):
there'll be a portion of timethat will be really primarily
focused on the writing process.
But really the majority of thetime we'll be integrating
reading experience and writingexperience. Again,
systematically, not justhaphazardly.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Very good. Okay. I interruptedyou. I think I did. You're
probably gonna tell us a littlebit about dynamic.

Yes. Let's go to dynamic . So ,
dynamic here means therelation. So reading, as I
said, reading and writing arerelated, but the relation is
not fixed or does not look thesame. It does not look the same
or constant as a function ofseveral factors. And let me go

(19:39):
over those factors. One iscalled the linguistic grain
size.

Oh my gosh, that's in a paper that you
wrote that I was just talkingto an audience about. So this
is really exciting. .

Yeah. Oh, good, good. So linguistic grain
size is really the chunk of aunit, right? So if you think
about some units likevocabulary or word reading and
spelling, we're talking aboutword size, right? For students
to get there, they need toactually have knowledge about
chunks that are smaller thanword size. So for example,

(20:15):
phonological awareness, right?
Working with syllables ,rhymes, or phoneme. Those are
units that are smaller thanword, right? Also letters,
right? Individual letters thatare chunks smaller than word,
right? So that's grain size.
There are chunks , linguisticunits or chunks that are larger

(20:36):
than word that's called thediscourse or text, right
Understanding sentences andthen a connected text, right?
So that's what I mean bylinguistic grain size. When it
comes to its relevance to thedynamic relations is that ,
according to the interactivedynamic literacy model, the

(20:57):
relation between word readingand spelling is stronger than
the relation between readingcomprehension and written
composition. So both arereading and writing skills;
word reading, spelling, readingcomprehension, and written
composition are all reading andwriting skills, but the chunk

(21:17):
is different. So then, when wethink about reading and writing
relations, we have to thinkabout, okay, does the relation
look the same for what I calllexical literacy skills, words,
reading and spelling, or textlevel reading skill and writing
skill, that's reading,comprehension, everything,
composition. Again, accordingto this model, the relation is

(21:40):
stronger for the word size, theword reading and spelling.

Why would that be important for a classroom
teacher to understand that thatconnection is closer at the
word reading level?

That's a really good question. So let me
just share a little bit aboutempirical evidence for it, so
that I'm not just arguing , I'm not just
claiming. So we have conducteda meta-analysis, a
meta-analysis is a study ofstudies. So we've looked at the
literature, published studies,unpublished studies thoroughly,

(22:16):
and we found across all thestudies, all the literature, we
found about 395 studies. Andthat included over 220 , 000
participants. And we looked atthe relations between word and
reading and writing. They wereindeed related, right? As the
theory says here. And they wereactually strongly related. But

(22:37):
then when we looked at therelation between word reading
versus spelling and, and thereading comprehension and the
written composition, therelation was stronger for word
reading and spelling. It was0.82. I don't know if listeners
are familiar with thecorrelations. This is
correlations. So let me brieflyexplain correlations. If you

(23:00):
imagine a graph, right? There'sX and there's Y and there are
dots scattered across, right?
So 0.82 correlation betweenword reading and spelling means
students who did well inspelling, they're very likely
to have high score in wordreading. Students who have low

(23:22):
performance in spelling,they're very likely that they
have a low performance in wordreading.

Hmm. Okay.

Now, when we looked at reading
comprehension and writtencomposition, the relation was
0.44. That's called moderate.
It's not strong relation, butit's moderate relation. What
that means is, in general,students who are strong in
reading comprehension, theyalso tend to be strong in
written composition. But thereare students whose performance

(23:54):
in reading comprehension isstrong, but low in written
composition and vice versa. Sothere's that difference, right?

Mm-hmm .Mm-hmm
.

Now your question about why we should
care, why educators should careabout the difference in the
relation between word readingand spelling versus reading
comprehension and readcomposition, is that when you
teach—for example, we justtalked about integrated
instruction, and when you teachword reading and spelling,

(24:27):
teaching them together helpssupport their reading and word
reading and spelling, readingcomprehension, and written
composition. Their integratedinstruction would help both
reading comprehension andwritten composition, but the
divergence will be larger inreading comprehension and
written composition. Anotherway of thinking about it is

(24:49):
that when you teach reading andwriting in an integrated
manner, it's really importantfor teachers to make the
connections between reading andwriting very visible and
explicit, especially forreading comprehension and
written composition, becausethey don't see the connections
as well for word reading versusspelling.

Hmm . Okay.

Does that make sense?

It does make sense. And right now I don't
know if my brain is workingcorrectly here, but it makes me
think of the hierarchicalnature of these things too.
That the smaller we get in thehierarchy—so down to the sound
level, the word level—the morethese two things are related

(25:37):
and that the reciprocal natureof them or how they go back and
forth, the dynamic nature ofthem, the smaller the unit, the
more important it is to havethose things secure in a
student.

This is great. The last part, let me
revise a little bit, refine alittle bit. So words reading
and spelling are more stronglyrelated because the
foundational skills for themare essentially the same,
right? It's , phonologicalawareness, morphological
awareness, and orthographicawareness. In terms of the
process, they also look verysimilar.

Okay.

Reading comprehension and written
composition, they draw onessentially the same skills,
but the starting point for thereading comprehension process
and written composition processis a little different. So in
reading comprehension, thestarting point is that the text
is given to you.

Right.

Right? The language and information is
given to you. So the reader'stask is decode, right? The word
is there and then try to get atthe message that's already
given there, the text, right?
That's the task. Whereas awritten composition, the
starting point is you actuallyhave to create content, right?

(26:55):
Right. . So althoughyou draw on the same skills,
for example, for readingcomprehension, you definitely
need content knowledge, right?
To understand the given text,you also need understanding of
vocabulary words for writing,you need the same thing, right?
We need content knowledge tostart generating content. You
also need vocabulary knowledgeto translate the ideas that we

(27:19):
have in mind into our languageso that we can actually write
it down, right? So although wedraw on the same skills, the
extent to which we use theseskills are slightly different
for reading comprehensionversus written composition
because the primary goal isdifferent.

Yeah, that makes sense. Very interesting. Okay,
well we've covered a lot ofideas here. Before we kind of
go on, I wanna check to see ifthere're any key concepts or
any of these ideas that youreally hope listeners take away
from your entire explanation sofar.

There's actually more for the
dynamic relationship.

We didn't finish it all. Oh my goodness.

No. So we, you know, we were talking about
linguistic grain size, and thenthat led to a conversation on a
very related concept. Soanother one, just briefly, I'm
not gonna spend a lot of time .

No, it's okay.
Thank you for bringing me back .

So we're now still talking about dynamic
relations, right? Thereading-writing relations look
different. They differ as afunction of first linguistic
grain size, which we justtalked about. Another one is
development or developmentalphase. The reading-writing
relations are stronger in thebeginning phase of development
compared to later phase. Andthat's what we found. For

(28:36):
example, word reading andspelling relation is stronger
for those in elementary gradecompared to adults.

That's interesting.

And the reading and writing relations
also differ as a function ofhow we measure reading and
writing. So let's think aboutreading comprehension
measurement. So readingcomprehension skill is measured
by using multiple tasks, right?

(29:04):
Most widely , multiple choicetask. Also open-ended chat
task. Also , retell task, whereask kids to read and then tell
me about what you read, orclose task, right? And for the
closed task, kids readsomething and then there's kind
of blanks and they have to fillin. So that's reading
comprehension measurement. Whenit comes to written

(29:24):
composition, usually it's kindof a performance-based task,
right? Kids are given a prompt,they're asked to write about
it, but what we have to thinkabout in terms of written
composition is how we evaluatewritten composition. There are
multiple, multiple ways.

mm-hmm .

Right? So most widely used approach is
looking at overall quality. SoJohnny wrote this, let me think
about how I'm gonna evaluate.
I'm gonna look at the idealcoherence of ideas, how
organized the ideas are, whatkind of languages used, the
voice, presence, or not writingconventions. I look at them all

(30:02):
and assign single score, right?
That's called holistic scoring,right? So that's overall
quality. And then sometimespeople look at each of them
separately in assign scores,right? So coherence of ideas, a
score of three, four, or five,organization score, and also
sometimes people look at textlength, right? How much they

(30:23):
have written, because how muchthey have written matters for
the quality, because you cannotsay about something very well
without saying enough, right?
There's also other approachesto measure, like looking at the
written composition calledcurriculum-based measurement,
etc. But the point is that whenyou look at reading
comprehension and writtencomposition, I said the overall

(30:44):
correlation is 0.44. But if youlook at reading comprehension
as measured by multiple choiceversus written or closed, the
relation is different. Soreading comprehension is more
strongly related to writingquality when it's measured by
multiple choice or open-endedcompared to when it's measured

(31:07):
by a closed task. Right? Someasurement matters. I guess
the implications for this foreducators is when you look at
how kids do, you have to reallythink about how you measure the
reading comprehension orwriting.

Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So I'm gonna go back andmake some connections and tell
me if this seems right based onall you told me about
interactive and dynamic relatedto your model. So your model
expresses that thereading-writing relationship is
really reciprocal or back andforth in nature, right? So

(31:45):
that's the interactive part ofit, is that it's reciprocal in
nature. And the dynamic elementof it is actually related to
the linguistic grain size we'retalking about, the
developmental trajectory orwhere we are in the learning
process, and then how thosethings either reading or
writing are actually measured.

(32:05):
Does that feel like a goodsummary?

That was a perfect summary.

That was hard.
,

You're amazing .

So maybe that's the big idea we want people to
take away, is that reading andwriting is reciprocal in
nature, and there's elements tothat that we need to consider
based on the dynamic nature ofreading and writing.

Absolutely.
So one of the things that Iwant listeners to take away
from this session is that, youknow, a lot of educators
understand the reading andwriting are related, but I
think educators need to have areally precise understanding
about it. So we need to have agood mental model about how

(32:51):
they're related and why they'rerelated so we can use that
knowledge to inform ourinstruction and assessment.

Yeah. And what I like about theoretic models or
models that you've developed—sothe little house model is
great, I can't wait for ourlisteners to see that—is
because sometimes I wonder ifan educator goes to a
professional development andlearns about something like
phoneme awareness or somethingabout spelling or something

(33:21):
about syntactical awareness orwriting sentences or text
structures. If you don't have aframework in which to attach
it, you can sort of kind of godown a rabbit trail on one
thing instead of thinking abouthow it relates to the whole.

(33:41):
Does that resonate?

Absolutely.
I mean, that's exactly thewhole point about the model
specifying the naturerelations, how things are
related instead of talkingabout just, you know, what
pieces contributed. Right? Sothings are related in a very
systematic way, and that doeshave implications, right? So
sometimes I see a classroomthat just focuses on

(34:06):
phonological awareness, right?
Or a word reading, but withoutconsidering spelling. Without
benefiting or leveraging thepower of spelling for
development of word reading andspelling. The same thing goes
for other pieces.

Hmm . Yeah, that makes sense. When we first
talked, you said that one ofthe things that was unique
about your approach that youtook was actually linking it to
this idea of reading andwriting difficulty. Can you
talk a little bit about that?

Sure. Let me actually start off by saying
that I've read some articlesand I also heard from some
people stating that, you know,a theoretical model is for a
specific population, like, forexample, only a skilled reading
population or phase, right? Forskilled reading, less skilled

(35:02):
reading, or typicallydeveloping kids or, you know ,
monolingual children, bilingualchildren only. A theoretical
model should explain phenomenafor all these different
populations, right? Anddifferent phases of
development. And that's wherethe reading-writing difficulty
comes in for this interactivedynamic literacy model. Because

(35:28):
the interactive dynamicliteracy model explains what is
required to develop reading andwriting skills, but also
difficulties associated withit, right?

Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm
. So let meunpack this in a few pieces
because I've thought about itand written about it. One is
that difficulties in wordreading, spelling, and
handwriting tend to occurtogether, instead of in
isolation. That's becauseagain, going back to the house

(36:01):
figure, they rely on sharedskill, right? So if some
students have weaknesses inphonological processing, it's
gonna show it as difficulty innot only word reading but also
spelling. So if you think aboutdyslexia literature, right?
Students with dyslexia, theirdifficulty is not just in word

(36:22):
reading, their difficultiesconsistently is in spelling as
well, right? Mm-hmm . Yep. The same
thing occurs with handwritingfluency or keyboarding because
, handwriting and keyboarding,some people might think that
it's just primarily motorskills or hand-eye
coordination. That is part ofit. But also , handwriting
fluency or keyboarding alsorelies on orthographic

(36:45):
awareness as well, right? So ifa student's word reading and
spelling difficulties are dueto orthographic awareness, then
they're also likely toexperience handwriting
difficulties as well. Oh, okay.
Mm-hmm

Students with dyslexia will also
experience difficulty with thewritten composition, for many
of them. People think aboutdyslexia as a reading
difficulty.

Mm-hmm .

But spelling and word reading are
so closely related. So thosedyslexia experience
difficulties with word readingand spelling, and spelling is
required. It's absolutelynecessary for a written
composition. And thereforethose who have dyslexia will
also experience writtencomposition difficulties. And
studies have shown that thosewritten compositions by

(37:34):
students with dyslexia tend tohave some quality issues. The
writing quality tends to belower, sentences tend to be
choppy, and there's some otherdifficulties as well.

Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm
. That makessense. Are there other
connections to reading andwriting difficulty that you
wanna highlight outside of justthat?

Sure, there's more. And let me
briefly go over that. Sobecause reading comprehension
and written composition arerelated, that means
difficulties in readingcomprehension, right? There'll
be co-occurrence betweendifficulties in reading
comprehension and writtencomposition. Also, in the house

(38:18):
figure, oral language isfoundational for both reading
comprehension and writtencomposition. And therefore
those with weak oral languageskills will also tend to have
weak reading comprehension andwritten composition. And
literature consistently hasshown that students with
language impairment haveweakness in both reading

(38:42):
comprehension and writtencomposition. There are a couple
more. One is readingdifficulties, writing
difficulties, and languagedifficulties co-occur with weak
domain-general cognition. Sobecause in the figure, at the
very bottom is domain-generalcognition, right? That's
foundational for everything. Soif one has difficulties, so for

(39:02):
example, those with theintentional, you know, deficit,
right?

Mm-hmm . They will
experience difficulties inlanguage reading and writing
most likely, but not all, ofcourse, because it's
foundational for all learning.
And lastly, there are multiplepathways for reading
difficulties and writingdifficulties. So if you think
about, again, the chaineffects, right? There's no

(39:28):
single pathway. You couldexperience reading difficulties
if you have weaknesses inphonological processing or
orthographic processing ormorphological processing, or if
you have a weak vocabularyknowledge or if you have a weak
, higher-order cognition, suchas making inferences,
understanding multipleperspectives, etc. Mm-hmm

(39:50):
. So essentiallythe way we can think about this
is that any relationship thatis working together to build us
as strong and literate humanscan also work against each
other. And we should bewatching for that as well. I
don't know if I said thatright, but you understand what
I'm trying to say in summaryhere.

Yes. I think of reading and writing as
a system. A very strong andvery related system. So we
should not think of them asindependent systems.

Mm-hmm . Yeah. That's
great. There's a lot here. AndI think our listeners are going
to again, benefit from seeingthe visual and then thinking
through it alongside yourexplanation of it. That's one
of the weaknesses of a podcastis we don't have a visual to be
able to show it. As we sort oflike make a transition to start

(40:43):
wrapping up though, I hearyou're working on a new
project, like maybe writing abook. Is that true?

Yes, absolutely. So finally,
, I'm working on thebook. I say finally because
I've been meaning to, but youknow, there are a lot of other
things also. Finally , I'mworking on a book where I talk
about reading, writing, andreading and writing
connections, and implicationsfor assessment and teaching.

So that is exciting. Our listeners should
look forward to that. Do youhave any idea of the release
date on that or are you notthat close?

W e are hoping for an early fall
release.

Oh, yay! That's exciting. So listeners, here's
some suggestions, get the imageof the house that Young
described, listen to thispodcast, and they'll be all set
up then to buy your book andlearn even more. So that'll be
a great professional learningopportunity for them. Any final
thoughts or advice you mighthave?

Well, first off, having been a
classroom teacher, and alsosomeone who works with teachers
all the time, I wanna recognizeand thank all the educators for
their dedication and importantwork because, you know, their
work has direct impact onchildren's development. So I
wanna recognize that. And thenthe second piece is really ,

(42:12):
you know, you don't have toremember the name, interactive
dynamic literacy model, , but I want you to really
remember this house figure,right? And have that as a
mental model and really thinkabout what that means for
teaching and assessment.

That's great advice, and I really appreciate
you taking time to sort ofunpack through this
environment, unpack somethingthat's really important. I
wanna thank you for your workbecause like I said, it was
really eye-opening to me tohelp me bring all these
elements of literacy, not justa reading model, not just a
writing model, but a way tothink of both of them together.

(42:49):
So thank you so much forjoining us.

Thank you so much for having me and for
the opportunity.

This is really exciting because we're trying
something new after we saygoodbye to our guests, to just
do a bit of a summary aboutthings that I heard, bring it
to you, our listeners, in alittle bit different way. First
time we've ever tried this, sowe're gonna see if you like it.
If you do like it, please letus know. And I am so excited

(43:20):
about this conversation withYoung. I took away three really
big things that I think areimportant. And one of them is,
she talks through thescientific process beautifully.
Like it's sort of a metaunderstanding of how you employ
the scientific process. Whenshe was in the classroom, she
observed something and shereally got curious about it,
right? Like thisreading-writing relationship.

(43:43):
And she decided to do someinvestigation or some research
about what this was. And sheformed this hypothesis. And it
was so interesting to her thatshe decided that we don't all
have to do this, but shedecided that she was gonna go
back and get more training. Andso she started doing this
experimenting and analyzingdata, and she created this

(44:08):
model of literacy, of readingand writing. She put some
experiments next to it to seewhat was true and what wasn't
true, and now she'sdisseminating that information.
So that was one thing that Ithought was really important.
The second thing I thought wasimportant is just this literacy
model itself. As we weretalking about this model, I got
more and more excited. I got itwrong. The title of it wrong,

(44:31):
it is really the interactivedynamic literacy model. And
that's kind of important, so ifyou listen to the episode, this
interactive or reciprocalrelationship between reading
and writing is reallyimportant. But the dynamic part
is really important too. Howthis changes in different ways,
both over time as kids learn,but also the different elements

(44:51):
of literacy. So she talkedabout sub-lexical, which we
just heard an episode with JaneAshby about what that means in
terms of phonology. She talkedabout lexical level here.
That's that word level that'sreally important. And you can't
think about these things inisolation, right? You have to
think about them togetherbecause they work together and

(45:13):
they impact each other. Andwhat I love about theoretical
models is they give you a placeto sort of hang information on.
And so if you think aboutwhat's happening in the
classroom, you can look at thatmodel and say, "Wow, am I doing
this? And why am I doing this?
And how I am, am I doing this?"And that's the third thing that
I think is really cool, is shemade the connection to why it

(45:38):
matters to educators in theclassroom. Why this model can
help them think through whatthey're doing in terms of
teaching and learning, and alsowhat's happening in the world
of assessment. You know, I justthink it's really important
that we're not doing randomactivities or random
instruction, or we don't haveliteracy blocks that are, "I'm

(45:58):
doing a little bit of readinghere and a little bit of
writing over here." They allhave to be integrated. And so
this episode is so powerful toexplain the "why" behind that
integrated literacyinstruction. This one's gonna
be an episode y'all are gonnalisten to you over and over
again. I know I've already goneback and listened to it three

(46:19):
times, and I really encourageyou to get into the show notes
and follow the resources there.
Print out that house and goback and re-listen then to how
she explains this model and howit works together. Look at your
instruction in your classroom,what's happening in your
school, right? Make sure thatthose things make sense with

(46:39):
each other. It's just a greatmodel to dig into a little bit
more. Today's guest was Dr.
Young Suk-Grace Kim, professorat the School of Education,
University of California atIrvine. She is an American
Educational ResearchAssociation fellow. She also

(47:00):
serves as the editor-in-chieffor the Journal Scientific
Studies of Reading and thechair of the California Reading
Difficulties Risk ScreenerSelection Panel, appointed by
the California State Board ofEducation. In two weeks, we're
closing out this Season ninereading reboot by tackling as

(47:21):
many questions as we can fromthe listener mailbag. I'll be
joined by friend of the show,Dr. Claude Goldenberg, to
answer your literacy questionson everything from pendulum
swings to screening in bothEnglish and Spanish, to
supporting older students whoare multiple grade levels
behind.

Claude Goldenberg (47:39):
It becomes much more challenging to get
them to read and sit throughlessons that might seem kind of
babyish. That's where the artof teaching really comes in,
and being able to motivatekids. But you need to have the
science also. You need to knowwhat needs to be in place to
help these kids catch up andaccelerate.

That's next time. Catch that episode and
all of our past episodes bysubscribing to Science of

Reading (48:05):
The Podcast on the app of your choice. Science of
The Podcast is brought to you by Amplify. I'm Susan
Lambert. Thank you so much forlistening.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S9 E13: Empowering instruction through mental models, with Young-Suk Grace Kim, Ed.D.

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

S9 E13: Empowering instruction through mental models, with Young-Suk Grace Kim, Ed.D.

On Purpose with Jay Shetty