Amplify
Season 9, Episode 13

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

In this episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan Lambert is joined by Young-Suk Grace Kim,  a professor at University of California at Irvine School of Education. Dr. Kim begins by defining a theoretical model, outlining its value to teachers as it pertains to literacy instruction. She describes her own interactive dynamic literacy (IDL) model, which seeks to more fully explain reading and writing connections. Dr. Kim emphasizes how reading and writing function as a powerful and closely related system, and examines how this system interacts with developmental phases, linguistic grain size, and reading and writing difficulties, including dyslexia. After navigating the complexities of this conversation, Susan ends the episode by sharing her unique insights and takeaways from her time with Dr. Kim.

Meet our guest(s):

Young-Suk Grace Kim, Ed.D.

—

Young-Suk Grace Kim, Ed.D., (Harvard University) is a professor at the School of Education, University of California at Irvine. She is a former classroom teacher in San Francisco. Her scholarship focuses on understanding language and literacy development and effective instruction for children from diverse backgrounds. Her areas of research include reading comprehension, reading fluency, listening comprehension and oral language, dyslexia, higher-order cognitive skills, written composition, and reading-writing relations. She has worked extensively with monolingual children and multilingual children from various linguistic backgrounds including English, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, and Kiswahili. Her research has been supported by over $60 million in grants from the Institute of Education Sciences, the U. S. Department of Education, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Science Foundation. Her work was recognized by several awards, including the 2012 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) by former President Barack Obama, the Developing Scholar Award, and the Robert M. Gagne Outstanding Student Research Award. She is an American Educational Research Association (AERA) Fellow, and serves as the editor-in-chief for Scientific Studies of Reading and the chair of the California Reading Difficulties Risk Screener Selection Panel (RDRSSP), appointed by the California State Board of Education.

image

Meet our host, Susan Lambert

—

Susan Lambert is the Chief Academic Officer of Elementary Humanities at Amplify, and the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast. Throughout her career, she has focused on creating high-quality learning environments using evidence-based practices. Lambert is a mom of four, a grandma of four, a world traveler, and a collector of stories.

As the host of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Lambert explores the increasing body of scientific research around how reading is best taught. As a former classroom teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer, Lambert is dedicated to turning theory into best practices that educators can put right to use in the classroom, and to showcasing national models of reading instruction excellence.

Transcripts and additional resources

—
Connect with Young-Suk Grace Kim on X
Read: Enhancing Reading and Writing Skills through Systematically Integrated Instruction
Read: Reading and Writing Relations Are Not Uniform: They Differ by the Linguistic Grain Size, Developmental Phase, and Measurement
Join our community Facebook Group
Connect with Susan Lambert
Save your spot. Want to hear more from Dr. Kim? Join us for our Spring Science of Reading Summit where she’ll be giving the keynote address on the relationship between reading, writing, and language.
Spring Science of Reading Summit: The Deep Links Between Reading, Writing, and Language
Transcript

Quotes

—
“Theory is an explanation about how things work. …It's a structured framework, a mental framework, that helps us explain, and predict, and understand phenomena.” —Young-Suk Grace Kim, Ed.D.
“Theoretical models matter because they offer insights into the processes of reading and writing, as well as factors that contribute to the development of reading and writing skills and/or difficulties in development. Teachers' understanding of this will empower them to make decisions about instructional approaches.” —Young-Suk Grace Kim, Ed.D.
“Lower order skills are necessary for higher order skills—that means skills and knowledge have a series of causal effects. So if you flip it the other way—any challenges...skills—it's going to have a series of impacts on higher order skills.” —Young-Suk Grace Kim, Ed.D.
“A lot of educators understand that reading and writing are related, but I think as educators, we need to have a really precise understanding about it. We need to have a good mental model about how they're related and why they're related, so that we can use that knowledge to inform our instruction and assessment.” —Young-Suk Grace Kim, Ed.D.
“If an educator goes to a professional development and learns about something like phoneme awareness…but you don't have a framework in which to attach it, you can sort of go down a rabbit trail on one thing instead of thinking about how it relates to the whole.” —Susan Lambert