Episode Summary

In this episode, Katie talks with Dr. Marnie Ginsberg about what helps kids learn to read and why so many teachers were never given the tools to fix word-reading problems. Dr. Ginsberg shares the story that launched her career: sixth-grade students reading years below grade level and a breakthrough approach that helped them make dramatic gains in a single spring.

Together they unpack the research-to-practice gap (and why effective interventions still “sit on a shelf”), and then get very practical: Marnie explains how Reading Simplified teaches phonics without over-relying on rules, using the brain’s pattern detection (statistical learning) plus carefully designed contrast (sit/sat, mat/map/mop) to accelerate decoding.

You’ll also hear a clear explanation of phonemic awareness vs. phonics, why separa ...