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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
The essential guide to teaching literacy skills to K-3 students
Reach All Readers is filled with practical tools for every kindergarten and early grade educator. This book addresses the science behind how students learn to read and how educators can apply this information in their classrooms every day. It is jam packed with research on literacy, spelled out in an easy-for-anyone-to-understand way. You'll also find evidence-based routines and activities to apply in the classroom. Learn the “how” of teaching literacy, and gain an understanding of why these approaches work. Charts and graphics illustrate concepts, so you can visualize how the big picture connects to practical applications and approaches. With Reach All Readers, teaching literacy is a breeze!
This reader-friendly guide to the science of reading education will help you improve your reading instruction with research-backed strategies. Literacy expert Anna Geiger breaks down complex concepts and presents them in an easy-to-digest format. Then, she offers concrete ideas you can implement immediately.
- Get all the must-know information about K-3 literacy education in one place
- Understand the latest research on how students learn and get tools for putting that research into practice
- Follow concrete lesson plans and practical tips to level up your literacy teaching
- Develop a big-picture understanding of literacy education so you know how best to help each and every student
Anyone responsible for teaching K-3 students reading, writing, and literacy skills—including teachers, homeschoolers, tutors, parents, and administrators—will want a copy of Reach All Readers.
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Seitenzahl: 384
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Introduction
How This Book Is Organized
Note
CHAPTER 1: The Big Picture
The Whole Word Method
Why Johnny Can't Read
Jeanne Chall's Research
Whole Language
The Report of the National Reading Panel
Balanced Literacy's Beginnings
Emily Hanford's Reporting
Scientifically-Based Research
The Simple View of Reading
Scarborough's Reading Rope
How the Brain Learns to Read
How We Learn Words
Key Things to Remember
Learn More
Notes
CHAPTER 2: The Science of Learning
What's Memory Got to Do with It?
Explicit Instruction
How to Ensure Your Students Remember What You Teach
Key Things to Remember
Learn More
Notes
CHAPTER 3: Oral Language
The Five Domains of Oral Language
Oral Language Routines
Make Your Classroom Language-Rich
Key Things to Remember
Free Resources
Learn More
Notes
CHAPTER 4: Phonemic Awareness and the Alphabetic Principle
Phonological Awareness
Phonemic Awareness: An Overview
Teaching Phonemic Awareness
Key Things to Remember
Free Resources
Learn More
Notes
CHAPTER 5: Phonics
Code Emphasis Versus Meaning Emphasis
Types of Phonics Instruction
Guidelines for Effective Phonics Instruction
The Debate Between Print-to-Speech and Speech-to-Print
Key Things to Remember
Free Resources
Learn More
Notes
CHAPTER 6: Fluency
The Components of Fluency
Fluency and Comprehension
Developing Automaticity at the Letter and Word Level
Developing Fluency at the Text Level
Key Things to Remember
Free Resources
Learn More
Notes
CHAPTER 7: Vocabulary
How to Decide Which Words to Teach: The Three Word Tiers
Teaching Individual Tier Two Words
Teaching Tier Three Words
Teaching Word-Learning Strategies
Key Things to Remember
Free resources
Learn More
Notes
CHAPTER 8: Comprehension
What Is Comprehension?
Teaching Sentence Comprehension
Reading Comprehension Strategies
Putting It All Together
Key Things to Remember
Learn More
Free Resources
Notes
CHAPTER 9: Linking Reading and Writing
Teach Handwriting
Teach Spelling
Teach Students to Write About What They Read
Teach That Sentences Contain a “Who” and a “Do”
Teach Students to Expand Simple Sentences
Teach Students to Combine Sentences
Teach Students to Connect Sentences
Teach Students to Write Paragraphs
Other Ways for Students to Respond to Text in Writing
Key Things to Remember
Free Resources
Learn More
Notes
CHAPTER 10: Dyslexia
What Is Dyslexia?
Help for Dyslexia
Key Things to Remember
Learn More
Notes
CHAPTER 11: Using MTSS to Reach All Readers
Multi-tiered Systems of Support (MTSS)
Delivering Tier 1 Instruction
Designing Your Daily Schedule
Key Things to Remember
Free Resources
Learn More
Notes
Conclusion
Glossary
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1.1 Examining the Simple View of Reading
Chapter 4
Table 4.1 Counting phonemes in words.
Table 4.2 Phonemic Awareness Tasks
Chapter 5
Table 5.1 Types of English Graphemes
Table 5.2 English Grapheme Chart
Table 5.3 Possible Keywords for Teaching Letters and Sounds
Table 5.4 Most Common Prefixes and Suffixes
Chapter 6
Table 6.1 Oral Reading Fluency Norms
Chapter 7
Table 7.1 A Semantic Feature Analysis
Table 7.2 Types of Context Clues
Chapter 8
Table 8.1 Parts of Speech
Table 8.2 Types of Phrases
Table 8.3 Types of Clauses
Table 8.4 Types of Sentences
Table 8.5 Types of Cohesive Ties
Table 8.6 Reading Comprehension Strategies
Table 8.7 Story Elements
Table 8.8 Expository text structures
Chapter 9
Table 9.1 Spelling Patterns and Generalizations
Chapter 11
Table 11.1 Acadience Reading Universal Screening Measures
Table 11.2 Program Evaluation Chart
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 History of the reading wars.
Figure 1.2 The Simple View of Reading (SVR).
Figure 1.3 The Simple View of Reading is useful for defining different types...
Figure 1.4 Scarborough's Reading Rope.
Figure 1.5 The four-part processing model for word recognition.
Figure 1.6 The pre-alphabetic phase.
Figure 1.7 The partial alphabetic phase.
Figure 1.8 The full alphabetic phase.
Figure 1.9 The consolidated alphabetic phase.
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 The average person can only hold about four pieces of information...
Figure 2.2 Cognitive load and working memory capacity.
Figure 2.3 Teaching a blending routine
Figure 2.4 Say It Move It
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 Sample Morning Message
Figure 3.2 Shared reading poem
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 Rhyming words.
Figure 4.2 Onset and rime.
Figure 4.3 Phonological awareness skills.
Figure 4.4 Consonant phoneme chart.
Figure 4.5 Vowel phoneme chart.
Figure 4.6 Sequence of phonemic awareness development.
Figure 4.7 Sound boxes without letters.
Figure 4.8 Adding letters to sound boxes.
Figure 4.9 Using letter tiles.
Figure 4.10 Using dry-erase boards.
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 Phonics and comprehension.
Figure 5.2 The three-cueing model.
Figure 5.3 Four types of phonics instruction.
Figure 5.4 Embedded mnemonics
Figure 5.5 A sound wall for consonant phonemes.
Figure 5.6 A vowel valley for vowel phonemes.
Figure 5.7 Successive blending.
Figure 5.8 Final blending.
Figure 5.9 Blending lines.
Figure 5.10 Magnetic grapheme tiles on a metal tray.
Figure 5.11 Cover, Copy, Compare technique.
Figure 5.12 Decodable high-frequency words.
Figure 5.13 Irregular high-frequency words.
Figure 5.14 Beat the Clock.
Figure 5.15 Star Words.
Figure 5.16 Early leveled books are predictable with strong picture support....
Figure 5.17
The Cat
by Anna Geiger. Illustrated by Rocio Zapata.
Figure 5.18 Closed-syllable activity: Find the Match.
Figure 5.19 Spelling dictation.
Figure 5.20 Sound Mapping.
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 The alphabet arc.
Figure 6.2 Alphabet arc with anchor letters only.
Figure 6.3 Missing letter cards.
Figure 6.4 Fluency grid.
Figure 6.5 Phrase-cued text.
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 A semantic map.
Figure 7.2 A Frayer Model.
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1 This popular graphic has led to misunderstandings about reading c...
Figure 8.2 Steps for building background knowledge.
Figure 8.3 Anchor chart for monitoring comprehension.
Figure 8.4 Five-finger retelling scaffold.
Figure 8.5 Retelling bookmark.
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 The pinch-and-flip method for achieving the perfect pencil grip....
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1 The collaborative problem-solving model.
Figure 11.2 Four types of assessment.
Figure 11.3 An example of a phonics diagnostic assessment.
Figure 11.4 Three tiers of instruction.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Introduction
Begin Reading
Conclusion
Glossary
Index
End User License Agreement
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Praise for Reach All Readers
“Reach All Readers is a gift for elementary teachers—and their students! Anna Geiger deftly packs the what, why, and how of the science of reading into one user-friendly, empowering book that you'll keep coming back to again and again.”
—Kate Winn, Teacher & Host of IDA Ontario's Reading Road Trip Podcast
“We've long needed Reach All Readers, a book on effective reading instruction written for teachers, by a teacher. Anna presents what she's learned about the science of reading and instruction in an accessible and useful text. You'll want to read it cover-to-cover, discuss chapters with colleagues, and hang on to it as a reference book.”
—Margaret Goldberg,Co-founder of The Right to Read Project
“Anna Geiger doesn't just present the science; she equips educators with practical strategies and resources, translating them into actionable knowledge that can be readily applied in the classroom. Whether you're a seasoned teacher or just starting out, this book empowers you to become a more informed and effective practitioner. Aptly named, Reach All Readers illustrates Geiger's knack for making the science of reading less “science-y.”
—Faith Borkowsky,Founder of High Five Literacy, LLC, Author, and Co-host of The Literacy View Podcast
“Anna has been able to capture the complexities of implementing the science of reading and make it seem simple and tangible to any educator who wants to make a difference in the lives of their students. This will make a perfect book study text for schools and teachers across the country.”
—Brent Conway,Assistant Superintendent, Pentucket Regional School District
“My own science of reading journey is a lot like Anna's; I put a lot of hours into self-education. I wish this book was available when I started! It's established that students learn to read best when their teachers follow a strong scope and sequence and provide direct, systematic instruction. Teachers learning about the science of reading need the same. Every page and chapter of Reach All Readers equips teachers to best serve all students. As an SOR geek I couldn't put it down. As a dedicated practitioner, I will return to it often.”
—Virginia Quinn-Mooney,Host of Science of Reading Happy Hour, Moderator and Group Expert for “What I Should Have Learned in College”
“Anna's clear and concise writing makes complex topics easy to understand. Packed with valuable info, her book is a go-to resource for elementary teachers and deserves a spot on your bookshelf.”
—Lindsay Kemeny,Author of 7 Mighty Moves: Research-Backed, Classroom-Tested Strategies to Ensure K-to-3 Reading Success
Reach All Readers
USING THE SCIENCE OF READING TO TRANSFORM YOUR LITERACY INSTRUCTION
ANNA GEIGER
Copyright © 2024 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available
ISBN 9781394205653 (Paperback)ISBN 9781394205660 (epdf)ISBN 9781394205677 (epub)
Cover Design: Wiley
For Kate,
my sister and friend
Foreword
Let me tell you a story. It begins with an elementary school teacher who is committed to supporting her students to become skilled readers and writers. She spends years perfecting what she learned in college, by creating a literacy-rich environment and sparking a love of reading. She trusts her intuition and lets her students lead the way.
Then one day, she reads something that calls into question everything she believes to be true about how children learn to read and how reading should be taught. At first, she smugly dismisses this new information as false. But in the back of her mind, she is haunted by the students she hasn't been able to reach. And so, the investigation begins.
The teacher discovers information about reading that is different from what she was previously taught. She uncovers research that causes her to realize that the craft she has been perfecting has flaws, and that there might be a more effective approach. The teacher experiences a range of emotions that include anger, regret, shame, and ultimately fierce motivation to learn as much as she can about the science of reading.
Does this story sound familiar to you? As a teacher-educator in the graduate reading science program at Mount St. Joseph University, this story is painfully familiar to me. It is the story I hear over and over and over again from countless passionate, committed, skilled, veteran teachers. Anna Geiger was one of those teachers. Over the years, I've watched Anna grapple with the reading research and learn to share her new understanding with me and with others in her coursework, her blog, her podcast, and now in her book, Reach All Readers.
So, how did we get here? Why is Anna's story of learning, unlearning, and relearning familiar to so many educators? By way of explanation, the book begins with a brief but captivating journey through the history of the reading wars. Information about reading instruction is contextualized within the science of learning. Practical applications to the classroom and direct contrasts between balanced literacy and structured literacy punctuate the key research findings about how children learn to read and the elements of effective instruction.
The central content of the book is structured into chapters on each of the essential early literacy skills—oral language, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, reading comprehension—with an additional chapter on the link between reading and writing. These chapters are full of brief, relevant research summaries and practical applications to the classroom. The information will empower educators to understand how research works, and how it can be used to improve reading outcomes. Teachers will appreciate the many step-by-step guides, sample lesson plans, and links to additional resources included in each chapter.
Throughout the book, explanations of how research-aligned instruction differs from the all-too-common balanced literacy approach clarify the actions teachers can take to get better results. But simply knowing the research isn't sufficient. To support implementation of research-aligned instruction in schools, the final two chapters on dyslexia and multi-tiered systems of support focus on building a system that meets the needs of all learners. The content on using assessment within a collaborative problem-solving model for building a tiered system of instruction and intervention is particularly useful. Teachers will appreciate the practical suggestions on topics such as flexible grouping, intentional scheduling, careful program selection, and differentiation of classroom instruction.
While reading Reach All Readers, teachers will recognize that Anna has been exactly where they are on this transformational journey, which makes her the perfect guide to illuminate the next steps. The book will be useful to everyone who wants a practical resource for digesting the research and putting it into practice in schools. I hope other teacher-educators will recognize the role the book can play in teacher preparation.
Whether you are just beginning your journey toward the reading research or are responsible for guiding others, you can rely on Reach All Readers to provide the right balance of knowledge and application. Anna and I share the goals of accelerating the learning trajectory of current educators and preventing future teachers from repeating her painful story. I am honored to elevate this book as part of the solution.
Dr. Stephanie Stollar
Part-time Assistant Professor, Mount St. Joseph University
Founder of the Reading Science Academy
Acknowledgments
I am forever grateful to my husband, Steve, for his never-ending patience and love, and to Eliana, Isaiah, Micah, Josiah, Mariah, and Elisha, who obligingly stopped playing the piano or bouncing a basketball in the kitchen so I could write without distractions. I am also thankful for my mom's generosity in caring for my children, so that I am able to attend out-of-town conferences to learn from the experts in person.
I am immensely grateful for Emily Hanford's reporting, which broke through my stubbornness and led me down a path I never foresaw; I'm never going back. I appreciate everyone who patiently spoke with me in the early days as I struggled to let go of practices that I'd held dear for decades: Mitchell Brookins, Emily Gibbons, Jocelyn Seamer, Deedee Wills, Jean Gunderson, Sue Brokmeier, and countless others.
Endless thanks goes to the many experts who have taken an hour out of their day to join me for a podcast interview; they are my teachers.
I am so thankful to those who generously gave their time to review a chapter: Savannah Campbell, Martha Kovack, Christina Winter, Amie Burkholder, Stephanie Stollar, Lindsay Kemeny, Nathaniel Swain, and Heather O'Donnell.
I owe special thanks to Stephanie Stollar, who has taught me so much through her Reading Science Academy, and who wrote the foreword for this book. She is always generous with her time and resources, and I continue to learn from her.
I couldn't have taken a year to write a book without the support of my incredible team, who in addition to their regular work painstakingly read and reviewed every chapter: Laura Cherney, Rachel Boerner, Heather Groth, René Parsons, and Regina Hendricks.
Thank you to the many others who shared opinions and suggestions, including Rachel Beiswanger, Kate Winn, Stephanie Darling, Jessica Farmer, Elise Lovejoy, Lexi O'Brien, Sara Marye, Sarah Paul, and Gin Quinn-Mooney.
Thank you also to Sam Ofman, Moses Ashirvad, Kezia Endsley, Christina Verigan, Sharmila Srinivasan, and the rest of the Wiley team for bringing this book to life.
Most of all, I thank my Savior, Jesus, who has blessed me beyond measure.
About the Author
Anna Geiger, M.Ed., is a former teacher with classroom experience from first through fifth grade. She currently serves educators through her website, The Measured Mom, where she has shared hands-on lessons, thoughtful articles, and printable resources since 2013.
Anna is Orton-Gillingham certified and has earned a Reading Science graduate certificate from Mount St. Joseph University. She hosts a weekly podcast called Triple R Teaching, provides thousands of resources to members of her membership site for PreK–3rd grade educators, and is a frequent presenter at virtual workshops, summits, and conferences.
Introduction
I began my teaching career in 1999, just a few years after Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell published their first edition of Guided Reading. I read Lucy Calkins' The Art of Teaching Reading on a Florida beach, highlighting passages as I imagined how magical my classroom would be after spring break. Running records, miscue analysis, and other practical topics in my master's degree program only fueled my excitement.
I didn't use research articles to study the efficacy of a theory or method. Instead, I trusted my professors, my favorite authors, my experience, and my intuition.
I clung to the mantra that I knew my students best. I envisioned researchers as technicians in lab coats who hadn't spent a day in the classroom. How could their studies contradict what I knew to be true based on my own experience and others' anecdotal evidence?
Research professor Mark Seidenberg described my point of view perfectly: “The scientific perspective is seen as sterile and reductive, incapable of capturing the ineffable character of the learning moment or the chemistry of a successful classroom.”1
When I first read the transcript of Emily Hanford's audio documentary “At a Loss for Words,” I didn't take it seriously. In the documentary she criticized three-cueing, which was central to my beliefs about teaching reading. Surely a journalist couldn't know more than experienced teachers! As I reread the transcript, however, I began to question what I had believed for so long.
This led me on an unexpected journey of relearning what it means to teach reading well.
This is the book that I wish I'd had as a reading teacher! In its pages I explain why many of the balanced literacy practices I held dear do not align with research. I provide summaries in key areas of the science of reading and include practical routines, tips, and strategies to give you a clear path forward.
How This Book Is Organized
Chapter 1 provides an overview of the reading wars and a summary of how the brain learns to read. I share important theories that provide the background knowledge you'll need for the chapters that follow.
Chapter 2 explains why the knowledge of how students learn to read isn't enough to teach literacy. Teachers also need to understand how students learn—and how best to teach them. The importance of explicit instruction and frequent review are emphasized in this chapter and throughout the book.
Oral language is the foundation of literacy. Chapter 3 highlights the complexity of oral language and provides practical ways to make your classroom language-rich.
Chapter 4 explains how phonemic awareness develops and lists step-by-step routines for building phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle.
Chapter 5 covers phonics. This is the longest chapter in the book—not because the science of reading is concerned only about phonics, but because we have a beautifully rich and complex language. You will learn guidelines for effective phonics instruction, get strategies for teaching high-frequency words, and find useful charts that you can reference whenever you need them.
Chapter 6 emphasizes the importance of automaticity in word reading and shares specific ways to build fluency at the letter, word, and text level.
Vocabulary is closely tied to comprehension, so I wrote Chapter 7 to help you decide which words to teach and to give you meaningful ways to make those words stick.
Chapter 8 demonstrates how to build comprehension at the sentence level, explains the importance of background knowledge, and shares research-based ways to teach reading comprehension strategies.
While this is not a book about writing, I included Chapter 9, which links reading and writing, because writing is such a powerful way to improve reading comprehension. You'll get tips for teaching handwriting, spelling, sentence writing, and paragraph writing—all with the ultimate goal of helping students use writing to better comprehend the text they read.
Chapter 10, on dyslexia, is an important one because children with dyslexia struggle to learn to read with balanced literacy methods. This chapter addresses dyslexia myths, shares common signs of dyslexia, and lists the steps you should take if you suspect this learning disability.
Finally, Chapter 11 describes an evidence-based framework for applying the science of reading. This system can help you deliver high-quality, research-based instruction to all students.
Each chapter includes a summary of the key points, links to learn more, and a QR code that will send you to free resources on my website that you can use immediately. Ready to reach all readers? Let's get started!
Note
1
. Seidenberg, M. (2017).
Reading at the Speed of Sight,
Basic Books, 10.
CHAPTER 1The Big Picture
Debates about how best to teach reading are nothing new. The reading wars, which are essentially a disagreement about the proper role of phonics in reading instruction, began almost two centuries ago (Figure 1.1).
The Whole Word Method
In the mid-1800s, education reformer Horace Mann argued against explicit instruction in letters and sounds. He described letters as “skeleton-shaped, bloodless, ghostly apparitions”1 and advocated a whole word method instead. The whole word method taught children to read words as individual units based on shape.
This method gained traction, and major reading programs in the 1930s and 1940s adopted the look/say approach. Dick and Jane, a popular basal reading series of the time, repeated the most common high-frequency words in its stories.
Oh, Jane.
Look, Jane, look.
Look, look.
Oh, look.
Why Johnny Can't Read
Rudolf Flesch published his sensational book Why Johnny Can't Read in 1955. Flesch argued that phonics instruction is the most natural way to teach reading.2 The book became a bestseller, and the reading wars intensified.
Figure 1.1 History of the reading wars.
Jeanne Chall's Research
In the 1960s, Jeanne Chall, a leading researcher from Harvard, analyzed research studies comparing different approaches to beginning reading. She studied widely used basal reading programs and observed how reading is taught in over 300 classrooms.
Her conclusion?
A focus on systematic, sequential phonics instruction is the best approach for teaching beginning readers. It produces better outcomes in word recognition in the early grades and even helps reading comprehension improve up to fourth grade.3
To those who described phonics instruction as lifeless and boring, Chall noted that students’ engagement was independent of the program but rather depended on the atmosphere created by the classroom teacher.4
Whole Language
The first edition of Jeanne Chall's book, Learning to Read: The Great Debate, should have ended the reading wars. But they were just heating up.
In the 1970s, the whole language method entered the scene. Whole language proponents believe that learning to read is very much like learning to speak: it's natural. If we surround children with quality literature and environmental print, and we read aloud to them, they'll pick up reading without a lot of explicit instruction.
Ken Goodman, one of the founders of whole language, wrote: “Reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game. It involves an interaction between thought and language. Efficient reading does not result from precise perception and identification of all elements, but from skill in selecting the fewest, most productive cues necessary to produce guesses which are right the first time.”5
The Report of the National Reading Panel
In 1997, The United States Congress convened the National Reading Panel (NRP) to determine what research had to say about reading. In 2000, the NRP concluded that five key factors are essential in learning to read: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.6
Balanced Literacy's Beginnings
Around the time that the NRP began its work, balanced literacy was born. Balanced literacy was an attempt to end the reading wars between the whole language and phonics camps by taking the best from each approach. It became immensely popular in the early 2000s.
Balanced literacy has no agreed-upon definition; the balanced literacy I describe is rooted in Ken Goodman's work. Teachers typically teach beginning readers using predictable leveled books, which contain many words with sound-spellings that students have not yet been taught. In order to identify these words, students must use MSV: cues from context or pictures (meaning), cues from the structure of the sentence (syntax), or cues from the letters on the page (visual).This is known as three-cueing.
I was a balanced literacy teacher. I used running records to assess my students’ reading levels and taught them to read using leveled books. I thought that children learn to read by reading, so my first graders spent most of the literacy block reading leveled books at their independent level.
I feared that too much phonics instruction would get in the way of comprehension and fluency, so I was careful not to overdo it. I taught phonics in fewer than 10 minutes a day during our word study lessons. If students were reading and encountered a word with a pattern we hadn't examined yet, I encouraged them to use the picture or context to “solve” the word.
Most of my students appeared to read their predictable books fluently, applying phonics with varying levels of success and moving through the guided reading levels.
When I had students who floundered, I increased their diet of leveled books and encouraged their parents to read more to them at home. I am sorry to say that I did not consider that something in my approach could have been wrong.
Emily Hanford's Reporting
In 2017, APM Reports released an audio documentary called “Hard to Read,” with correspondent Emily Hanford, about why so many children with dyslexia have a hard time getting the help they need in school. The following year, Hanford reported that many educators either don't know what research reveals about how reading works or actively resist it.
It was Hanford's follow-up audio documentary “At a Loss for Words,” published in 2019, that finally got my attention. A teacher commented on my website, asking what I thought about Hanford's reporting. When I read the transcript of the documentary, this paragraph jumped out at me:
For decades, reading instruction in American schools has been rooted in a flawed theory about how reading works, a theory that was debunked decades ago by cognitive scientists, yet remains deeply embedded in teaching practices and curriculum materials. As a result, the strategies that struggling readers use to get by—memorizing words, using context to guess words, skipping words they don't know—are the strategies that many beginning readers are taught in school. This makes it harder for many kids to learn how to read, and children who don't get off to a good start in reading find it difficult to ever master the process.7
I was taken aback by Hanford's condemnation of three-cueing (not to mention completely insulted by her use of the word “guess”), but I was also relatively sure that a journalist could not know more about how reading works than an experienced teacher. I planned to write a post refuting “At a Loss for Words,” point by point.
On each of my daily walks, I tried to formulate what was sure to be a convincing rebuttal. But I never got very far; as it turned out, I didn't know as much about how reading works as I thought I did.
I began looking into the research myself. It didn't take long to discover that Hanford was right.
THE MODERN READING WARS: BALANCED VERSUS STRUCTURED LITERACY
Hanford's continued reporting has inspired me and countless others to take a closer look at balanced literacy, which is still the most prominent method for teaching reading in kindergarten through second grade in the United States.8
The ultimate goal of balanced literacy is to teach children to love reading. The ultimate goal of structured literacy is to teach children how to read.
Most balanced literacy teachers teach phonics, but this instruction is often unsystematic and disconnected from the other reading and writing their students do. Balanced literacy is defined in terms of activities that we do: reading aloud, shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading.
Structured literacy is an umbrella term coined by the International Dyslexia Association. It refers to an approach that provides systematic, explicit instruction in the alphabetic code. Structured literacy is focused on the elements that we teach: phonology, sound-symbol relationships, syllables, syntax, semantics, and morphology.9
Perhaps the most striking difference is the emphasis of each approach. Balanced literacy focuses on meaning right from the start. The ultimate goal of balanced literacy is to teach children to love reading. Structured literacy's early emphasis is the code. While it would be wonderful if children learned to love reading, the ultimate goal of structured literacy is to teach children how to read.
It's not that no one learns to read with balanced literacy instruction; about 40 percent of children learn to read as long as they receive broad instruction. But for at least 50 percent of all students, explicit, code-based instruction is absolutely essential for learning to read, and a systematic approach is advantageous for all students.10
Scientifically-Based Research
The science of reading is not a philosophy. It is not a “phonics first and only” approach. Nor is it a program or curriculum.
DEFINING THE SCIENCE OF READING
The Reading League is an organization whose mission is to promote the use of evidence-aligned instruction. It defines the science of reading as:
a vast, interdisciplinary body of scientifically-based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing. This research has been conducted over the last five decades across the world, and it is derived from thousands of studies conducted in multiple languages. The science of reading has culminated in a preponderance of evidence to inform how proficient reading and writing develop; why some have difficulty; and how we can most effectively assess and teach and, therefore, improve student outcomes through prevention of and intervention for reading difficulties.11
If you remember just one thing from that definition, let it be this: the science of reading is a body of research. A body of research is not a pendulum swing or a fad. It just is. Even if discussions of the science of reading disappear from social media, the research will remain.
A body of research is not a pendulum swing or a fad. It just is.
WHY MANY TEACHERS DON'T STUDY RESEARCH
As a teacher, I pored over professional books as often as I could. If someone had asked me if my teaching methods were based on research, I would have replied, “Oh yes! They're based on the writings of Fountas and Pinnell, Lucy Calkins, Regie Routman, and Sharon Taberski.” These authors’ books left me encouraged and inspired. I had no idea that much of what I read was based on a faulty theory of how reading works.
It didn't occur to me to track down a true research article; I hardly knew what one was. Besides, after a long day of teaching, I wouldn't have had the mental energy to decipher one. I would have agreed with the authors of The Reading Glitch: “The average scientific report is as digestible as a bowl of cold sauerkraut.”12
If you feel the same way, take heart! I wrote this book to give you a clear understanding of the research and how to apply it.
RESEARCH-BASED VERSUS EVIDENCE-BASED
Research-based practices are teaching methods based on what we've learned from research. Evidence-based practices are based on the research as well, but these practices have also been proven to work in a controlled setting. Just because a teacher or author calls something research- or evidence-based, doesn't mean that it is. Ask for proof; ask for links to the scientifically-based research.
Once you get your hands on a full research article, you may not have the time, energy, or (let's be honest) interest in reading through dozens of pages. Do the following to get the gist of the article:
Read the abstract and discussion/implications sections, which will give you a lot of valuable information.
Look at the study participants. Find out what intervention they received. How was the intervention different from what the control group received?
Finally, check what outcomes were measured. How were they measured? What was the effect size?
STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE AND EFFECT SIZE
Comprehending the jargon of a research study is difficult, but you're well on your way if you have a general understanding of two concepts: statistical significance and effect size.
If the results of a study are statistically significant, you can be confident that the results of the intervention aren't due to chance alone. Statistical significance is measured using p. The smaller the p value, the greater confidence you can have that the results weren't random.
Statistical significance doesn't mean much if the effect size is low. Effect size is a way of measuring the size of the difference between two groups: the students who received the intervention and the students who did not. An intervention could be many different things. It could be teaching a specific method for reading multisyllabic words or having students reread their decodable texts with a partner for 10 minutes a day. The effect size tells us whether the intervention actually made a difference in student learning.
For example, imagine that a researcher wants to find out whether explicit instruction in phonemic awareness improves reading outcomes. The researcher gives a pretest to two groups of similar students. One group receives the intervention (explicit phonemic awareness instruction) in addition to regular reading instruction. The control group only receives regular instruction. When the students are tested again six months later, the researcher finds an effect size of 0.5.
Cohen's d is one of the most common ways to measure effect size. Usually an effect size of below 0.2 does not have much practical significance. Values between 0.2 and 0.5 are considered to be small effects, values between 0.5 and 0.8 are considered to be medium effects, and values over 0.8 are considered large.13 The higher the effect size, the greater the likelihood that the practice will accelerate student learning.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CONVERGING EVIDENCE
It's important to find multiple studies that point to a particular conclusion. This is called converging evidence, which is present when different and independent sources support a single conclusion.
Ideally, you will find a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis summarizes the results of multiple independent studies to yield an overall effect size. A high quality meta-analysis is arguably the best way to determine whether a teaching practice is effective.14
WHEN RESEARCH DOESN'T HAVE THE ANSWERS
As psychologist Steven Dykstra explains, some of our practices are based on bullseye science, which is as close to absolute truth as science gets. Bullseye science tells us that good readers are proficient at decoding. It tells us that phonemic awareness is important for success in reading. It tells us that teaching phonics is better than not teaching it. However, “You can't teach just in the bulls-eye. There isn't enough there to get the job done. You're going to have to make choices and decisions with the best evidence and reasoning available.”15
Science hasn't answered all our questions. For example, we know phonics is important, but science doesn't give us a scope and sequence, a pacing guide, or the exact terminology to use.
Most of what teachers do in the classroom is an interpretation of the science. The teacher's job is to learn the science and make the best possible teaching decisions in light of it.
The Simple View of Reading
The Simple View of Reading (SVR) is a theoretical model that was developed by Gough and Tunmer in 1986 to simplify what is needed for a student to become a strong reader. According to the SVR, word recognition times language comprehension equals reading comprehension (Figure 1.2).16
Figure 1.2 The Simple View of Reading (SVR).
This simple theory has been supported by research many times in the decades since.17 No one has been able to falsify it.18
The Simple View of Reading does not assert that the reading process is simple; it merely separates the complexity into two parts. I consider it a bird's-eye view of the skills reading requires. See Table 1.1.
The SVR shows that you don't have to choose between the phonics and meaning camps; students need proficiency in both word recognition and language comprehension to understand what they read.
The SVR also contradicts three-cueing. When I was a balanced literacy teacher, I assumed that having my students identify the words using context, pictures, or partial phonics was appropriate because they were still arriving at the words. In fact, however, they were not truly reading the words. A score of “0” for word recognition times “1” for language comprehension still equals “0.” There was no reading comprehension because they were not actually reading.
Table 1.1 Examining the Simple View of Reading
Domain
Definition
Underlying Competencies
Word Recognition
(Also called Decoding)
The ability to read isolated words quickly and accurately
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Letter-sound knowledge
Phonemic awareness
Phonic decoding
Orthographic knowledge
Sight recognition
Language Comprehension
(Also called Linguistic Comprehension or Listening Comprehension)
The ability to understand the oral language in a text if someone else reads it aloud
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Background knowledge
Morphological awareness
Syntactic awareness
Vocabulary
Inference making
Perspective taking
Text structures
Comprehension monitoring
Figure 1.3 The Simple View of Reading is useful for defining different types of reading difficulties.
Finally, the SVR helps define different types of reading difficulties.21 As you can see in Figure 1.3, just one quadrant (the top right) represents a skilled reader. The other three quadrants show the three types of reading difficulties.
Scarborough's Reading Rope
Developmental psychologist and researcher Hollis Scarborough created the rope (see Figure 1.4) in 1992 as a visual metaphor to help parents and teachers understand the complexities involved in learning to read. Scarborough's Reading Rope consists of two bundles, language comprehension and word recognition. The strands of each bundle are the subskills of the two domains.22
In Scarborough's view, the most important feature of the rope is its emphasis on the change over time in the nature of the relationships among the developing strands and bundles. If any strand gets frayed, it can hold back the development of other strands and weaken the entire rope.23
Figure 1.4 Scarborough's Reading Rope.
Image by Hollis Scarborough, published by Guilford Press
How the Brain Learns to Read
Stanislas Dehaene, a cognitive neuroscientist, has lamented that “it's a shame that teachers know more about the workings of their car than they know about the working of the brain of their children.”24 If you'd like all the particulars, check out Dehaene's book Reading in the Brain. I share only the most essential information here.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A PROFICIENT READER READS A WORD
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measures small changes in blood flow when different parts of the brain are activated. Through this technique, scientists have observed what happens when a person reads a word. There is not just one area of the brain that lights up when a person reads, because different parts of the brain must work together for reading to occur. Scientists have observed that when a person reads a word, activity unfolds from the back of the brain to the front, looping several times.
Upon seeing the word, the visual information enters the brain via the occipital lobe at the back of the brain.
The information quickly moves into an area in the left hemisphere called the visual word form area. Dehaene calls it “the brain's letterbox.” The brain's letterbox is where you store letters, letter combinations, and words you know by sight.
Finally, there's an explosion of activity into at least two networks in the left hemisphere. One network concerns meaning, and the other concerns pronunciation.
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