7 Research-Backed Strategies for Reading Success with Lindsay Kemeny

Lindsay

Yeah, well, to answer this question, I need to explain why I started my blog many years ago. It was a combination of different things happening at once, but the biggest reason was that my own son was struggling to learn how to read.

I was really embarrassed because I thought, I’m a teacher, and I can’t even help my own son learn to read. I was doing everything I had been taught—everything I learned in college, everything I had used in my early years of teaching, and everything that worked for my older kids. But nothing seemed to be working for him.

Eventually, he was diagnosed with dyslexia, as well as depression, and that pushed me to take a deep dive into learning. I wanted to understand: What do students with dyslexia need to learn how to read? What does every student need to learn how to read? What happens in the brain when someone is learning to read?

As I was learning, I started applying those strategies with him, and at the same time, I implemented them in my classroom. I became so passionate about this because I was also frustrated and angry—I hadn’t been taught a lot of these things in my teacher preparation program. Not only had I not been taught them, but I had actually been taught things that research had since debunked.

This book grew out of that passion. I kept thinking, Every teacher deserves to know this information, and every student deserves a teacher who understands this. That’s why I originally started my blog.

I think, in the back of my mind, I always thought, Oh, it would be so neat to write a book someday!—but I figured that would be in 20 years because I just didn’t have time for it.

Then, several people from Scholastic happened to come across my blog. They reached out to see if I was interested in writing a book. At first, I thought, Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I could write an entire book. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wanted to—because I really wanted to help teachers.

There are so many incredible books from experts and researchers, and they’re wonderful. But it’s a whole other thing to take that research and apply it in a real classroom setting. That’s really what I wanted to focus on: Here’s all this incredible research and everything I’ve learned—now, here’s how I apply it in my classroom.

Here’s your corrected transcript with grammar improvements while keeping as many of the original words as possible:

Sara

And that’s one of the things I love so much about your book—it’s so accessible for teachers. It’s something they can easily read, digest, and put into practice.

To your point, I am a former balanced literacy educator, and when I first started learning about the science of reading, I felt a mix of frustration and anger. It was almost like, Wait a minute. I’ve worked really hard to be a proficient and effective educator throughout my career, and now I’m discovering that what I was doing wasn’t as effective as I thought—or was even wrong to some degree.

I know you shared at The Reading League conference what it was like going through this transformation—supporting your son through his dyslexia and depression—while also dismantling your own beliefs about effective literacy instruction. And as educators, we have this deep identity tied to who we are as teachers. So talk to us a little bit about what it was like going through your own teacher transformation while simultaneously trying to help your son overcome his dyslexia.

Lindsay

Well, I’ve always loved teaching literacy—it’s always been my favorite thing. And like you, I used balanced literacy. I was heavily trained in balanced literacy, and if you had asked me, I would have said, This is the best way to teach reading. But the truth is, that was the only way I knew how to teach reading. I didn’t know anything different.

So going through this transformation was huge for me. Even before my son was diagnosed, I started feeling uneasy about some of the things I had been taught. That same year, earlier in the school year, I moved from teaching second grade to teaching kindergarten for the first time.

In second grade, I had always used strategies like, Look at the first letter. Look at the picture. Does it give you a clue? And I never thought twice about it. But when I started teaching kindergarten, I spent all this time explicitly teaching letter names and sounds, and I was so excited to bring my students to the small group table and say, Now I’m going to show you how to read! But all I had were those predictable, repetitive books, and I found myself having to say, Oh, wait, stop. You can’t sound this one out. Look at the picture. Does it give you a clue? And I had this realization: Wait… we’re not actually reading.

It felt really wrong. But at the time, I still didn’t fully connect this realization to balanced literacy—I just had this gut feeling that something wasn’t right.

A couple of months after my son was diagnosed with depression, I was in a social media group for parents of children with dyslexia. Someone asked about a certain reading program, and another person commented, Well, that’s balanced literacy, so it’s pretty much the worst thing for our kids.

I remember being completely shocked. Wait, what? Balanced literacy? That’s supposed to be the best way to teach reading—what are they talking about?

That was a pivotal moment for me. From there, I started digging deeper, and my perspective started shifting. Honestly, it felt like going through the stages of grief. At first, I was in denial—What are they talking about? Then, I felt angry. Then, I felt guilty. And eventually, I moved to a place of acceptance—Okay, I need to embrace this new approach.

At some point, you have to move forward. You can’t just beat yourself up for what you didn’t know—because you didn’t know it.

Sara

Yeah, I remember when I first heard about the science of reading, I was like, What is this? I was giving a workshop once, and a teacher asked me if the strategies I was sharing were aligned with the science of reading. And I thought, I’ve never heard that phrase before.

I remember almost feeling embarrassed, like, I’m standing here presenting as a literacy expert, and I don’t even know what the science of reading is?! Of course, that sent me into research mode. And the more I learned, the more I realized, Oh wow… some of these balanced literacy practices are not as effective as I thought.

I kind of wanted to live in denial for a little while—just pretend I didn’t know this new information and keep doing what I was doing. But to your point, we have to keep moving forward. If we’re truly committed to doing what’s best for children, we have to be willing to let go of previously held beliefs, even if they once felt foundational to our teaching. We have to be committed to learning the research and putting it into practice.

So, I know your book outlines Seven Mighty Moves for Reading Success, which I love. Can you briefly walk us through what these seven moves are and how they contribute to helping students develop foundational reading skills?

Lindsay

Sure! I could easily spend an hour on each of these topics, but I’ll keep it brief.

Sara

We’ll encourage everyone to go get the book! So give us the overview, and then they can dive into the book for more details.

Lindsay

Okay, the first move is to teach phonemic awareness with intention. And honestly, I didn’t even know phonemic awareness was a thing—I hadn’t been taught anything about it. I feel so bad because I taught second grade for years, and I never even considered that my struggling readers might have had weaknesses in this area.

Move two is to teach phonics explicitly and systematically. Now, I always would have said, Yes, I teach phonics! And honestly, I would have been kind of offended if someone suggested otherwise. But in reality, I didn’t truly understand what explicit and systematic phonics instruction looked like. I had no scope and sequence to follow. So really, what was I teaching? It was just whatever would come up in the book that my students struggled with. I’d think, Oh, I guess I’ll teach that. That was a huge shift for me—to follow a scope and sequence and make sure there were no gaps in my students’ knowledge, ensuring they really understood the basics of the code.

Move three is to teach decoding strategies—not cueing strategies. This was a major shift for me. I used to teach students to look at the first letter, look at the picture, skip the word and read the rest to figure it out. I literally had a game called Guess the Covered Word—which was all about guessing! It was just a guessing strategy. Transitioning to explicitly teaching students to rely on letter-sound correspondences—the sounds I had actually taught them—was a big change.

Move four is to use decodable texts instead of predictable, repetitive texts. You know the ones—those early reader books that say, We cleaned up the garage. We cleaned up the kitchen. We cleaned up the bedroom. They’re filled with sound-spelling correspondences students haven’t been taught yet, so the only way to read them is by using three-cueing strategies—which, as we now know, have been debunked. That was a huge change, and it was really exciting because I was teaching kindergarten at the time.

Sara

And I bet you saw a huge impact because your students were actually able to read the words in the text.

Lindsay

Yes! And just to clarify, that doesn’t mean you get rid of all your other books and only use decodables. They’re like training wheels—we use them for a short period, then move students away from them when they’re ready.

Move five is to embrace a better approach to sight words. I used to think, Oh, students just memorize these. We would memorize them as whole visual units, but that actually inhibits the way the brain needs to store them in memory. So I completely changed how I taught sight words.

Move six is meaningful fluency practice. Sometimes we assume fluency will just develop on its own, but if a student struggles with fluency, simply having them read silently won’t fix it. The problem just becomes inaudible. They need lots of practice with feedback in order to improve.

And finally, move seven is to improve comprehension by developing vocabulary and background knowledge. These were two areas I had previously neglected—I didn’t realize just how important they are for comprehension. This doesn’t mean we never teach comprehension strategies—I still teach my students strategies—but they’re embedded within our instruction, serving the purpose of helping students understand the text and build knowledge, rather than being isolated strategy-of-the-week lessons.

Sara

I can imagine that as you made these moves and shifts in your classroom, it must have been so exciting to see the light bulbs go off for your students. Once they had phonemic awareness, decoding words became easier. When they understood that some sight words could actually be decoded in parts, they started recognizing them faster. When they built their fluency, it all came together—leading to stronger reading outcomes. That must have been so fulfilling and satisfying as a teacher—to make these shifts and then see real progress as a result.

Lindsay

Absolutely! It’s exhilarating. I feel like I have so much clarity now. Before, it all felt kind of foggy—I was in this heavy fog, unsure of how exactly to help my struggling readers become proficient. I didn’t really know how to get them from one level to the next. I would just keep having them read and think, Okay, we exhausted Level D… I guess we move to Level E? But I didn’t really know how to bridge the gap.

Now, I have so much clarity. I know what to do and what to look for when I’m working with a student.

Sara

That’s got to be so empowering. Now, I know your book is primarily for primary teachers who are building foundational reading skills, but I also know you used many of these strategies with your son when he was in third and fourth grade to support his dyslexia. Do you think it’s important for upper elementary teachers to understand these mighty moves?

Lindsay

I really do, and honestly, all students who are learning to read need the same things. They need the same things. And yes, I used these strategies with my son in third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. I worked with him explicitly on his reading until he was in sixth grade. And really, when I wrote the book, I thought, This is for all grade levels. But the publisher wanted to gear it towards and market it for K–3.

Actually, right after the book came out, there was a book study on it—I think it was hosted by The Reading League Minnesota. One of the teachers leading the study said, I have a problem with the fact that this book says K–3, because I’m a middle school teacher, and all of this applies to my students too! And I was like, Yes! Definitely, for sure! So if you have an older reader who is still struggling in any of these areas, the information in the book is still relevant. They need the same things.

Sara

Yeah, and I think so many upper elementary teachers have never received the training or support on how to help their students who are still struggling with decoding. They’re often left to figure it out on their own, right? And to your point, I love how that middle school teacher was like, Wait a minute—my struggling readers still need these things. The grade level doesn’t dictate what students need to work on. It’s about identifying the gaps. Whether a student has a gap in kindergarten or middle school, if they need phonemic awareness, they need phonemic awareness. We have to start in the same place and fill those gaps so they can move forward.

Lindsay

Yes, and in the upper grades, everything suddenly gets labeled as a comprehension problem. That’s what you see—students struggling with comprehension because that’s what’s being measured on all their tests. But you have to ask, Is it really a comprehension issue? Or is it that they can’t decode the words? Or maybe they can decode them, but they’re not fluent, so their fluency is impacting their comprehension? There are so many underlying factors, and you wouldn’t know to look for them if you didn’t have this foundational knowledge. Without it, you might assume comprehension is the main issue when, in reality, there’s something else going on.

Sara

That’s why I think your book is so important. I love that it’s out in the world because it’s accessible for teachers at every grade level. We all need to be literacy experts. At the end of the day—I’ve shared this with my audience before—curriculum doesn’t teach students how to read, a teacher does. A teacher has to understand the full process—how a student goes from knowing no letters and no sounds to reading fluently and comprehending texts. Everything you share in your book is such a huge part of that, and I love that teachers now have access to it.

Lindsay

Oh, thank you!

Sara

So I know that you really emphasize research-backed, classroom-tested strategies. And I think it’s so cool that you’re still a classroom teacher and wrote this book for other teachers. I know a lot of the strategies in the book are ones you use with your students, so they are truly classroom-tested. Can you share an example of one strategy that has had a really positive impact on your students?

I know it’s probably hard to pick just one!

Lindsay

Yeah… I might have to share two.

Sara

Go for it! That’s fine.

Lindsay

Okay, so I’ll start by sharing continuous blending, also known as connected phonation. There’s research to support this approach, and it’s been a game changer. Let me describe it—if you have a student who reads a word like at but then says something completely different, or if they read cab as tack or kit, where they change one of the phonemes, a lot of times people will say, Well, they need to use continuous blending.

So with continuous blending, you use continuous sounds first so students can stretch them out. For example, /k/ is a stop sound, which makes it harder to blend, but if you use a word like sun, where they can stretch out the /s/, it makes blending easier. However, not all words will have continuous sounds, so what do you do then?

What you want to do is teach them to put the first two sounds together. So if the word is cat, they would identify /k/ and /ă/, and then I’ll ask, Can you blend those together? They’ll say caaaa—and then I’ll unveil the last sound, which I’ve been covering, and they’ll finish blending cat. This approach makes blending much easier.

The goal is to get students to put the first two sounds together automatically. For example, if the word is gum, have them say gu right away, then add the /m/—this will naturally lead them to read the whole word more smoothly. At first, some students can’t put those two phonemes together, so I’ll do it for them. This method is called body-coda blending, where they blend the initial sound with the vowel and then add the final sound.

For example, if the word is tub, a student might struggle to blend the sounds. Instead of making them struggle, I’ll prompt them to say tu, and then they’ll add the /b/, forming tub. It might sound like a small tweak, but this approach has made a huge difference for students who struggle with blending.

Maybe I got a little too detailed, but this strategy has really helped my students who have difficulty blending sounds together.

Sara

Well, I think that’s so helpful because it’s about putting scaffolds in place, right? Instead of letting a student keep guessing or struggling, we provide support to help them progress toward reading the word correctly. The continuous blending approach or prompting them to blend the first two sounds gives them the tools they need to connect the sounds in a meaningful way. Over time, these supports help them build the connections that will eventually lead to fluent reading.

Lindsay

Exactly! It’s all about scaffolding, and then we gradually pull those supports back as they improve. I think I shared a video of this in that Reading League session, didn’t I?

Sara

Yeah, you did.

Lindsay

Okay! That was so exciting because it showed a student at the beginning of the year who had really weak phonemic awareness, and then you could see his improvement over time.

The other thing I want to share isn’t about adding a strategy—it’s about stopping a strategy, and that’s stopping the encouragement to guess. That was a huge shift in my classroom. I remember when I first started using decodable texts, I saw a major difference.

The type of text students read really affects their reading behaviors. I remember that first year when I started questioning some of the methods I had been taught. I introduced decodable books, and I still remember this one little boy—actually, I think I shared this in my book. He was reading a decodable text for the first time, and he looked up at me and said, Mrs. Kemeny, I’m actually reading the words! He could feel the difference. He knew he wasn’t just guessing or going through the motions—he was actually reading. His excitement was through the roof, and it was such an amazing moment.

Sara

I love that! And yeah, I think it’s so tempting as teachers to say, If you don’t know, just guess, because we want students to feel like they’re reading. But that’s not what we want. We don’t want them to guess; we want them to think about what they know—letter sounds, blending strategies, decoding skills. We want them to apply those skills to actually read the word, not just take a wild guess.

Lindsay

And sometimes they don’t even need to be taught to guess. I mean, of course, it’s a problem if they’ve been taught to guess, but a lot of times, they just do it naturally. They start guessing when they’re thrown into a book that’s maybe too difficult for them, and it takes a lot of work to break that habit.

Sara

Yeah, especially if they’re in fourth grade and have been prompted to guess since kindergarten. That’s a habit that will take some time to undo.

Lindsay

And some of them become really good guessers.

Sara

Yeah, they can sort of fake their way through reading while guessing the whole time.

Now, I know that teaching foundational reading skills—especially in third, fourth, or fifth grade, where it’s expected that students already have these skills—can feel overwhelming for teachers. I think this is especially true for teachers who are just now learning about research-backed strategies. If the only tools they’ve ever been given are guess, look at the pictures, they may not have all the strategies they need to truly support their students. What do you recommend for teachers in terms of prioritizing or integrating the strategies from your book into their literacy block?

Lindsay

So here’s the thing—I can’t give a one-size-fits-all answer because it really depends on the teacher, the students, and the grade level. It all comes down to what their students are struggling with the most.

For example, if your students can decode and you’re focusing on fluency, then you can jump straight to Moves Six and Seven to support that. If you notice that students are struggling with decoding, and you see that they’re missing a lot of vowel teams or don’t recognize them, then you need to focus on phonics instruction—teaching those vowel teams explicitly and giving them practice with word lists and targeted instruction.

Or, if you notice that students seem to say words correctly in isolation but struggle when blending them together—or if their spelling includes a lot of missing sounds where the words don’t even make phonetic sense—then you probably need to go back to Move One and work on phonemic awareness. It’s very common for students with reading difficulties to have phonemic awareness deficits.

So maybe my answer doesn’t feel like a straightforward solution, but really, it depends on where your students are and what they need most.

Sara

I appreciate that response so much because it’s such a good reminder for teachers that they know their students best. They see the gaps their students have, and they should trust themselves to make the right instructional moves. I think teachers often feel like they need someone to tell them exactly what to do—like, Where do I start?—but really, they have the knowledge to figure it out. So I love that response.

I’m curious—if you could add an eighth Mighty Move to the book, what would it be?

Lindsay

Oh, that’s tough! But one idea I had while writing the book—though I didn’t have space for it and it’s a little different from the other seven moves—is using assessment to guide instruction.

Too often, we give assessments, but then we don’t actually use the data to make meaningful instructional decisions. If we’re not using assessment results to inform our teaching, then what’s the point of giving the assessment in the first place? We need to make sure that we’re using that information to adjust our instruction based on what our students actually need.

Sara

That sounds like a whole second book! I think so many teachers would benefit from that because they often ask, How do I assess? What do I do with the data? How do I use it to guide my instruction? So maybe that’s a Book Two idea.

What advice would you give to teachers who feel like implementing all seven moves at once is overwhelming? Is there a specific move you suggest they start with?

Lindsay

My advice is to take baby steps. It can feel really overwhelming to think, I have to overhaul my entire literacy instruction all at once, but just take it one step at a time. Perfection is not required. Things are going to feel a little messy at first as you figure things out, and that’s okay. We want progress over perfection.

So my biggest piece of advice is to take it one step at a time and have grace with yourself and others.

Sara

I love that. That’s such an important reminder, especially since so many teachers are perfectionists. We want everything to be done perfectly from the start. But like you said, progress over perfection—taking one small step every day will make a huge impact over time.

Lindsay, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I appreciate you sharing your story, your knowledge, and the fact that you took the time to put all of this into your book. I know it’s making a huge impact on teachers. If my audience wants to connect with you or order your book, what’s the best way for them to find you online?

Lindsay

I’m on Instagram, Twitter, and now Bluesky at @LindsayKemeny. I also have a Facebook page called Teaching with Lindsay Kemeny. My book, Seven Mighty Moves, is available on Amazon and on Scholastic’s website.

And I also co-host a podcast called Literacy Talks. So if you’re a literacy nerd like me and want to hear more, you can check that out!

Sara

Awesome! We’ll link to all of those in the show notes as well. Again, thank you so much for coming on today, Lindsay—it was so great to talk with you.

Lindsay

Thank you! Thanks for having me.