Episode Details

Presented by Dr. Kate Cain, Professor of Psychology, Lancaster University, and Past President, Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR); Dr. Kristin Bourdage, Former Educator, Current Assistant Director, Professional Learning and Instructional Design, Partnerships for Authentic Learning and Leadership; and Beth Lawrence, M.A., CCC-SLP, Experienced Educator, Co-Founder, Infercabulary
Moderated by Dr. Donna Wright, Retired School Superintendent/Education Consultant

This edWeb podcast is sponsored by Really Great Reading.

The edLeader Panel recording can be accessed here.

Language comprehension is foundational to reading, yet it can feel difficult to define and even harder to teach at scale. It begins with oral language and develops over time, with decoding strengthening the pathway to meaning. While frameworks such as Scarborough’s Reading Rope and the Simple View of Reading highlight its importance, many districts lack a clear, actionable roadmap for building it across classrooms.

Research points to specific skills that distinguish strong comprehenders, including vocabulary knowledge, inference making, syntactic processing, background knowledge, self-regulation, and motivation. This edWeb podcast focuses on how these components come together in instruction, with a deeper look at vocabulary and inference making as high-impact levers for improving comprehension.

In this session, you learn:

1. The types of inferences students need to actively construct meaning from text
2. How vocabulary depth and inference making work together to build understanding across contexts
3. What it takes to implement language comprehension instruction effectively across classrooms and districts

This edWeb podcast is of interest to K-12 teachers, school leaders, district leaders, and education technology leaders.

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