Welcome to our National Literacy Month series of podcasts, presented in partnership between the Be Podcast Network and Reading Is Fundamental (RIF).

In this episode, Jethro welcomes Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan, host of the De Facto Leaders podcast. They discuss the role of related service providers in literacy, avoiding black-and-white thinking in educational interventions, and the multifaceted nature of vocabulary and comprehension in literacy development. Dr. Dudek-Brannan emphasizes the importance of structured service delivery planning and shares insights from her research on vocabulary, syntax, and their impacts on reading and writing comprehension.

• Getting everyone on the same page from different service providers.
• We’re not ignoring your discipline!
• Service delivery planning vs. lesson planning.
• Having a lot of experiences is what kids need to build vocabulary
• Need to have about 90-95% of vocabulary
• Phonics are essential, but if you don’t give them that explicit instruction, it becomes very difficult.
• Biologically primary and biologically secondary - we are wired to speak
• Fluency is one way to measure automaticity.
• Syntax Queen - metacognition and vocabulary.
• Content and structure.
• Sentence Structure

About Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan is the founder and owner/operator of Dr. Karen, LLC, a company focused on empowering therapists and educators to design interventions that support language, literacy, and executive functioning. She has a doctorate in Special Education and Director of Special Education and Assistive Technology credentials from Illinois State University, as well as a master’s and bachelor’s from Illinois State University in speech-language pathology. She spent 14 years in the school systems and has held various roles in leadership and higher education teaching and mentoring clinicians. She is the host of the De Facto Leaders podcast, where she shares evidence-based practices, her own experiences, and guest interviews on topics relating to education and healthcare reform. She currently holds a management role with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

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