PHOTO: Carolee Dean, author, educator, and literacy advocate, dedicated to transforming reading through structured learning and the magic of storytelling.
Exploring Language Literacy And The Power Of Story
Carolee Dean blends clinical expertise with creativity, crafting educational resources and young adult fiction that illuminate the pathways of literacy, empowering struggling readers while celebrating storytelling as a tool for growth.
Carolee Dean has dedicated her life to the transformative power of language. As both a Speech-Language Pathologist and Certified Academic Language Therapist, she has spent decades guiding learners who struggle with the written word, building bridges between sound, story, and comprehension. Her work moves beyond clinical expertise; it is rooted in a profound respect for the way language shapes thought, identity, and imagination.
Her HOT ROD series embodies this philosophy, offering structured, decodable texts that not only follow the Science of Reading principles but also celebrate creativity and curiosity. By pairing systematic instruction with engaging narratives, Dean invites readers to see literacy as more than a skill to be mastered — it becomes a doorway into meaning and discovery.
Alongside these educational works, Dean is also the author of award-winning young adult fiction, a field where her keen understanding of narrative structure deepens her storytelling craft. In Story Frames for Literacy, she distils years of classroom and clinical experience into a framework that empowers both educators and students to unlock the deeper architecture of stories.
At the heart of all her work lies a conviction that literacy is not just an academic pursuit but a human one — a means of connection, resilience, and growth. Through her teaching, publishing, and writing, Carolee Dean continues to illuminate the intricate pathways by which words become stories, and stories become a source of strength.
Your HOT ROD series focuses on structured literacy. How do you ensure each book aligns with the Science of Reading principles?
The Science of Reading refers to principles of instruction based on reading research. The emphasis is on systematic and explicit instruction implementing phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. As a certified academic language therapist, I was trained in a systematic and explicit program called Sounds In Syllables that is accredited by IMSLEC, the International Multisensory Structured Language Education Council. Sounds In Syllables follows a specific scope and sequence for how sounds and syllable patterns are introduced and practiced. Other accredited programs may follow a slightly different scope and sequence, but Sounds In Syllables is the one I adhere to the most closely. The decodable books and activities in the HOT ROD series are intended to provide support materials for programs that follow Science of Reading principles, but it is not intended to be a stand-alone program. Even so, the activity books provide the key elements typically included in a structured literacy lesson.
The HOT ROD series includes companion activity books. How do these resources support educators and parents in reinforcing literacy skills?
The activity books include flashcards and games for decoding practice, words and sentences for dictation, and spelling practice, activities for vocabulary and morphology, and strategies for comprehension. In addition, target words are used in cognitive flexibility games to provide additional practice in decoding while working on executive functions. Because the books are designed for whole classroom use as well as individual therapy, additional activities explore text types as well as sentence/paragraph/essay writing. There are even creative writing prompts. Because I’m also a speech-language pathologist, I’ve included a list of speech-language objectives that support literacy. As a young adult author, I have a strong appreciation for books and stories that are engaging as well as educational, especially for older students. Another factor of great importance is using a text that provides a meaningful context so that students continue to grow background knowledge while working on literacy skills. It can be difficult to do all of that using one resource, but that is exactly what the HOT ROD books strive to do through a strategy called Pair and Share Reading. An adult reads the background information while the student reads the decodable poems.
In “The Raven Remix Activity Book,” you explore decoding. How do you integrate phonological awareness into your activities?
Because the stories are written in verse, it’s natural to incorporate activities based on rhyme and alliteration. Additional activities use words from the story to work on syllable and sound deletion in initial, medial, and final position of the word.
Your blog highlights the importance of syllable types in decoding. Can you explain how this approach aids struggling readers?
Breaking a word into syllables helps a student attack it in manageable chunks. Furthermore, the syllable type provides information about the pronunciation of the vowel sound in that syllable. Take the letter e for example and its sound in the following words: help (closed syllable), hero (open syllable), little (final stable syllable), her (r-controlled syllable), Pete (silent e syllable), and east, feet (vowel teams). The pronunciation of the vowel is influenced by the type of syllable, so understanding these patterns helps with reading, especially with longer words. In addition to learning the types of syllables, students learn syllable division patterns. Different disciplines may address syllable division differently, but the objective of breaking words down into manageable chunks is still the same.
Your work emphasizes cognitive flexibility in reading. How can educators foster this skill in students with reading difficulties?
Cognitive flexibility is needed to be able to flex between the different possible pronunciations of a word while also considering the meaning within the context. Following the examples with e above, the following words contain the letter string her, but they involve different pronunciations of the vowel – her, here, hero, Heracles, and Hercules. A student often needs to flex between two or more possible options when pronouncing a sound. Adult readers do this all the time, but it happens so quickly that we don’t always think about what we are doing. Model your thinking process for students by talking out loud as you consider the different pronunciations of a word. This is especially helpful for character names, location names, and street names.
You offer free resources like the Long Vowel Word and Sentence Deck. How do these tools contribute to independent literacy practice?
For the word and sentence deck, students practice reading a target word and then read a sentence containing that word. Decks are organized according to syllable patterns. Practice with these words helps students generalize to reading other words containing that pattern. I offer a variety of other free decks at Boom™ Learning including a deck for Cognitive Flexibility. Check out the free decks and other resources here – https://wow.boomlearning.com/author/wordtravelpress.
“Story Frames for Teaching Literacy” introduces 12 key story elements. How do these elements enhance students’ narrative comprehension?
My 20 years working as a speech-language pathologist in the public schools informed my work on narrative structure. SLPs frequently use children’s books to treat a large variety of skills from morphology to vocabulary, sentence structure, inferencing, and even pragmatic language, theory of mind, and perspective taking. All of these skills impact comprehension. I took the basic story structure used by many educators and combined it with my experience as a young adult author to teach students to think about plot the way that authors think about plot. One book that strongly influenced my work is The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler. He looked at the Hero’s Journey as described by Joseph Campbell and adapted it for professional writers.
What advice would you give to aspiring authors aiming to create educational materials that effectively support literacy development?
To write books as specialized as what I’m writing takes a complex understanding of language and literacy development. It would be easier for an educator who already has that background knowledge to tackle writing books with that level of detail. On the other hand, there are less involved types of books focusing on more general topics like vocabulary. If I was an author wanting to break into educational publishing, I would look for Work for Hire projects where the publisher has already clearly established the guidelines.
