The science of reading is quite the rage these days. School districts and even whole states are requiring that students are taught to read based on what we know from the science of reading. That is a great development and one to be handled with caution.
The publication of the report Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, and Griffin, 1998) solidified the science of reading by an exhaustive review of studies on teaching students to read and finding the critical course of development for ensuring that all young children learned to read, rather than some children developing difficulties and failing to learn to read.
Their findings were affirmed a few years later by the National Reading Panel (2000) who also reviewed the scientific evidence on successfully teaching students to read and found essentially the same requirements. High quality core reading instruction that ensures all students learn to read includes:
- teaching students to manipulate phonemes ins words across all the literacy domains,
- systematic phonics instruction with application,
- vocabulary development for comprehension, both oral and written, and
- comprehension taught so that there is the exchange of ideas between the reader and the text.
These findings specify the content that must be included in reading instruction. However, they do little to identify the instructional strategies to be used to ensure that all students master the content and learn to read. Providing students with phonics worksheets where they identify the initial sounds for each picture on the page, etc. is attempting to teach phonics but with a method (worksheets) that has not proven effective.
The National Reading Panel also concluded that teachers must have extensive training on how to teach these reading components. They summarized effective professional development as teacher training that results in significant improvement in student reading achievement. A meta-analysis done by researchers at John Hopkins (Slavin et al., 2009) found that effective reading instruction includes specific teaching methods based on evidence with cooperative learning at the core of instruction.
Recent news reports indicate numerous schools and even some states are racing to adopt the science of reading. These reports emphasize efforts to ensure that systematic phonics instruction is included in reading instruction with little regard for other important components. As parents consider various schooling options (public, charter, private) for their children, schools boast that they teach phonics, often by showing students completing phonic worksheets. That will not do it. All of the content included in the science of reading must be taught and it must be taught with instructional strategies that have evidence of effectiveness.
This means that schools adopting the science of reading must also focus on instructional strategies being used and invest considerable time, money, and energy in training their teachers how to effectively teach reading. They must help staff that have learned to teach reading with leveled groups, worksheets, false cueing systems, round robin reading, etc. to abandoned these unproven methods and become proficient in proven instructional methods.
The rush to adopt the science of reading could be a huge step towards ensuring all students learn to read IF all of the science of reading content is accompanied by instructional methods that have also proven effective in ensuring all students learn to read. Just adopting the content and continuing to use instructional models that fail many of our students will continue to produce the miserable results we have now with way too many students reading below grade level. Schools that use the content from the science of reading with proven instructional strategies that teachers have mastered with extensive and ongoing professional development, are the schools where all students learn to read at or above grade level and have a clear path to success in school and beyond.
Information on proven reading instructional programs may be found at:
References
National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the national reading panel: Teaching children to read. Executive summary and report of the subgroups. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health.
Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., and Griffin, P. (Eds) (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children, National Academy Press.
Slavin, R. E., Lake, C., Chambers, B., Cheung, A., and Davis, S. (2009). Effective reading programs for the elementary grades: A best-evidence synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 79(4), 1391-1466.
This blog is written by Dr. GwenCarol Holmes, a long-time educator and passionate advocate for all students mastering rigorous standards.