by JAAL
<p>Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy podcast delivers current theory, research, and practice in support of effective literacy instruction. </p><p>During each episode, Matt Sroka invites a guest from the literacy field to delve into practical concepts for enhancing literacy teaching.</p>
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April 2, 2025
<p><span>Word-Level Reading Skills for Adolescent Learners with Dr. Brennan Chandler</span></p><p><span>Welcome to the </span>Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy Podcast<span>! I’m your host, Matt Sroka, and today’s episode as promised continues a series of episodes on the foundational literacy skills for adolescents. These discussions will be taken from a recent special issue of </span>The Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy<span>, which explores supporting adolescent readers' foundational literacy skills. Last episode I talked with the editors of this special issue. Today, I welcome my first author from this special issue Dr. Brennan Chandler. </span></p><p><span>As students progress into middle and high school, the expectation is that they can independently engage with complex texts. However, for students with or at risk for learning disabilities (LD), decoding multisyllabic words remains a significant challenge, often hindering their ability to access content knowledge and read for understanding. </span></p><p><span>In this episode of the </span>Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy<span> podcast, host Matt Sroka welcomes Dr. Brennan Chandler to discuss the importance of word reading efficiency, the unique challenges faced by secondary students with LD, and the instructional strategies that can help bridge this gap. </span></p><p><span>This conversation is based on the article written for </span>JAAL<span> titled: </span><a href="https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jaal.1399" rel="nofollow">Instruction to Support Word-Level Reading Skills for Adolescent Learners with Learning Disabilities</a> <span>written by Brennan W. Chandler, Jessica R. Toste, Elizabeth J. Hart, and Devin M. Kearns. </span></p><p><span>Brennan Chandler is an assistant professor of dyslexia and special education in the Department of Learning Sciences at Georgia State University. He received his Ph.D. in Special Education from The University of Texas at Austin with a focus on learning disabilities. His research focuses on improving outcomes for students with dyslexia and other significant reading and writing disabilities through developing, testing, and implementing intensive interventions. </span></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><span>Resources:</span></p><h5><a href="https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/19362706/2025/68/4" rel="nofollow">Special Issue: Foundational Skills in Adolescent Literacy</a></h5><p><br></p><p><a href="https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jaal.1399" rel="nofollow">Instruction to Support Word-Level Reading Skills for Adolescent Learners with Learning Disabilities</a></p>
March 19, 2025
<p><span>Foundational Skills in Adolescent Literacy with Drs. Sarah Sarah Lupo, Dianna Townsend, Rachel Knecht, and Dixie Massey</span></p><p><span>In today’s episode, host Matt Sroka welcomes Drs. Sarah Lupo, Dianna Townsend, Rachel Knecht, and Dixie Massey, guest editors of a special issue of </span>The Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy<span> on Foundational Skills in Adolescent Literacy. They discuss the motivation behind the special issue, the collaborative process of putting it together, and key themes that emerged. This conversation centers on their introductory commentary, </span><a href="https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/19362706/2025/68/4" rel="nofollow">Recognizing Complexity and Taking Action: Supporting Adolescents' Foundational Literacy Skills in Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Ways</a></p><p><span>Sarah M. Lupo, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Literacy Education in the Middle, Secondary, and Mathematics Department at James Madison University. Prior to working at JMU, she worked as an English teacher, ESL teacher, reading specialist, and literacy coach in Washington D.C., Istanbul, Turkey, Phoenix, AZ, and Charlottesville, VA. Her research strives to put theory into practice to find practical ways teachers can improve comprehension and disciplinary learning for K-12 students, while positioning all learners’ as capable and bringing cultural and linguistic assets to the reading experience.</span></p><p><span>Dr. Dianna Townsend’s research centers the language development of adolescents, with specific attention to vocabulary. She examines both the unique language demands of the disciplines and effective instructional strategies to help students understand and use the language of the disciplines. Her most recent book is </span>Words Worth Using: Supporting Adolescents’ Power with Academic Vocabulary,<span> published by Teachers College Press in 2022. Dr. Townsend’s research has been funded by the Spencer Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education. She is also a member of the Reading Standing Committee for the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). In Nevada, Dr. Townsend is the co-founder and President of the Nevada Adolescent Literacy Network (NALN) and a lead author of the Nevada State Literacy Plan. Dianna is a winner of the University of Nevada Reno’s Tibbetts Distinguished Teacher Award. She created the innovative Virtual Reading Clinic in the online M.Ed. Program in Reading Curriculum & Instruction to support remote and rural teachers in a graduate-level practicum experience. Within the College of Education and Human Development at UNR, Dr. Townsend is the Program Coordinator of the Literacy Studies Program.</span></p><p><span>Dr. Dixie Massey teaches at Seattle Pacific University. Her research interests include the role of motivation in literacy learning, the history of literacy instruction, and teacher decision making. She is co-author of </span>Teaching with children’s literature: From theory to practice <span>and </span>Overcoming Reading Challenges: Kindergarten through Middle School<span>. </span> <span>She is a contributing author for the Social Studies Schools Services. She has served as historian for the Literacy Research Association and the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers and currently chairs the History of Literacy ICG for the Literacy Research Association.</span></p><p><span>Rachel Knecht is an Assistant Professor of English Teaching at Brigham Young University. A former middle and high school ELA teacher, Rachel’s research focuses on supporting upper elementary and secondary students' reading comprehension, particularly through metalinguistic development. Rachel is also interested in cultivating dialogical spaces and instructional approaches in which students can draw on their cultural and linguistic resources and further develop metalinguistic awareness to comprehend and critically examine text. She is also committed to research-practice partnerships with public schools.</span></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><span>Resources:</span></p><p><a href="https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/19362706/2025/68/4" rel="nofollow">Special Issue: Foundational Skills in Adolescent Literacy </a></p><p><a href="https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/19362706/2025/68/4" rel="nofollow">Recognizing Complexity and Taking Action: Supporting Adolescents' Foundational Literacy Skills in Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Ways</a></p><p><br></p>
February 19, 2025
<p><span>Think Like a Linguist with Dr. Amy Crosson </span></p><p><span>In today’s episode, host Matt Sroka welcomes Dr. Amy Crosson for an in-depth conversation on vocabulary instruction for multilingual students. They explore her research on academic vocabulary and word analysis through Latin roots, highlighting strategies that empower students to draw on their linguistic knowledge. This episode provides valuable insights into how teachers can harness students' diverse language backgrounds to deepen their understanding and appreciation of words.The discussion centers on the </span>Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy<span> article, </span><a href="https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jaal.1226" rel="nofollow">“Think Like a Linguist: Leveraging Multilingual Students’ Expertise about Language”.</a></p><p><span>Amy Crosson is an associate professor at Penn State’s College of Education and is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Language Science at Penn State. She started her career teaching English as a Second language in a middle school in rural Guatemala and then as a bilingual Spanish-English kindergarten teacher in urban school districts in Massachusetts.</span></p><p><span>Amy’s research focuses on developing and evaluating instructional programs that are designed to improve and accelerate learning for multilingual learners in public school settings. Her work has focused on supporting multilingual learners (1) to sharpen their metalinguistic and language awareness, (2) to utilize their metalingual resources; (3) to engage in oral and written argumentation; and (4) to read with understanding.</span></p><p><span>In addition to the </span>JAAL<span> article on “Think Like a Linguist”, she and her colleagues recently published an article on the instructional program-- English Learners’ Robust Academic Vocabulary Encounters (EL RAVE)-- that gave rise to Think Like a Linguist. That article addresses the effects of Think Like a Linguist and the overall EL RAVE instructional program on multilingual adolescents’ language and reading outcomes. You can read about that in the journal, </span>Scientific Studies of Reading<span> (2025).</span></p><p><br></p><p><span>Article: </span><a href="https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jaal.1226" rel="nofollow">“Think Like a Linguist: Leveraging Multilingual Students’ Expertise about Language”</a></p><p><span>Other Related Resources:</span></p><p><br></p><p><span>EL RAVE Website: </span><a href="https://sites.psu.edu/elrave/" rel="nofollow">https://sites.psu.edu/elrave/</a></p><p><br></p><p><span>Words as Tools: </span><a href="https://ies.ed.gov/use-work/awards/words-tools-vocabulary-development-emergent-bilinguals-science-and-beyond?ID=5857" rel="nofollow">https://ies.ed.gov/use-work/awards/words-tools-vocabulary-development-emergent-bilinguals-science-and-beyond?ID=5857</a></p><p><br></p><p><span>Carlson, M. & Crosson. (2025). The synchronic status of historical bound roots in the mental </span> <span>lexicon: A dynamic, psychocentric perspective.</span> The Mental </p><p> Lexicon.</p><p> </p><p><span>Crosson, A.C., Kieffer, M.J., McKeown, M.G., & Nagy, W. (2025). Cross-language </span> <span>morphological analysis improves academic word learning for multilingual </span></p><p> <span>adolescents. </span>Scientific Studies of Reading<span> [Special issue on the science of teaching </span> <span>reading.] 10.1080/10888438.2024.2415916</span></p><p> </p><p><span>Crosson, A.C. & Silverman, R.D. (2022). Impact of COVID‐19 on early literacy instruction for emergent bilinguals, </span>Reading Research Quarterly, 57<span>. 5-14. </span></p><p><span>10.1002/rrq.456 </span></p><p><br></p><p><span>Crosson, A.C., McKeown, M.G., Lei, P., Zhao, H.*, Li, X.*, Patrick, K. & Brown, K. & Shen, Y.* (2021). Morphological analysis skill and vocabulary </span></p><p><span>knowledge are malleable through intervention and may contribute to reading comprehension for multilingual adolescents. </span>Journal of Research in </p><p>Reading, 44<span>, 154-174. 10.1111/1467-9817.12323 {Winner of the 2022 United Kingdom Literacy Association/Wiley Research in Literacy Education </span></p><p><span>Award]</span></p><p><br></p><p><span>Crosson, A.C., McKeown, M.G., Robbins, K. & Brown, K. (2019). Key elements of robust vocabulary instruction for emergent bilingual adolescents. </span></p><p>Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 50<span>, 493-505. 10.1044/2019_LSHSS-VOIA-18-0127</span></p><p><br></p><p><span>Crosson, A.C., McKeown, M.G., Moore, D.W. & Ye, F. (2019). Extending the bounds of morphology instruction: Teaching Latin roots facilitates academic </span></p><p><span>word learning for English learner adolescents. </span>Reading and Writing, 32<span>, 689–727. 10.1007/s11145-018-9885-y </span></p><p><br></p>
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