What is the Science of Reading?
If you’ve been in education for a hot minute then you’ve likely heard the phrase, “education is a pendulum”- meaning that everything in teaching seems to come, go, and eventually return slightly modified, slightly different, and with a new name. If you’ve also been in education for a hot minute, you also know that this swinging of the pendulum effect leads to skepticism or doubt when new or rebranded teaching practices emerge.
Recently, there has been a lot of buzz generated from the Podcast Sold a Story about emerging research around how we teach children to read. Everywhere teachers, administrators, interventionists, and even parents are talking about the Science of Reading. Everyone wants to know - what is The Science of Reading? Why does it matter? And is it indeed just another shift of the pendulum?
In my opinion, the science of reading isn’t quite a shift of the pendulum. Maybe it is the middle ground, the merging of all the things we know about how to teach kids to read. Maybe it is the ultimate compromise- meeting phonics supporters and whole language fans in the middle. What we do know…it is fully comprehensive, all-encompassing, and based on brain research and science about how kids learn.
Science of Reading Explained
The Science of Reading is not new, in fact, many people report that scientifically based reading instruction was a term first used in the 1830s! However, the idea of using scientific-based research to teach children how to read gained momentum in the early 90’s during the “Reading Wars”. More recently, the idea of using science-based strategies to provide instruction in reading gained popularity with the release of the podcast Sold a Story, which examines missteps in reading instruction in America over the last 20 years.
What the Research Says
For well over 20 years in education, educators have long questioned what is the best way to teach reading- phonics-based instruction or a whole language based approach? Do kids learn to read by learning every letter sound or do they memorize words and over time build a bank of words they recognize?
The research presented by Dr. Hollis Scarborough, who grounds the instructional practice aligned to The Science of Reading, would say that in order to learn to read, kids need BOTH (and more). Reading is a complex skill that requires multiple parts of the brain. In order to develop all parts of the brain required for reading, kids need high-quality instruction in both language comprehension and word recognition. An idea put forth in what has been aptly named Scarborough’s Reading Rope.
Scarborough’s Reading Rope
Scarborough’s Reading Rope illustrates just how complex reading is for students and the complex nature of multiple skills needed to be a fluent, comprehending reader. The rope is divided into 2 sections- the upper rope, which focuses on language comprehension, and the lower rope, which focuses on word recognition. Each section of the rope then identifies the learning skills necessary to become a fluent reader.
Scarborough identified that in order for students to be fluent in language comprehension, they need opportunities to build their background knowledge and vocabulary. They need to have an understanding of language structures and literacy knowledge, and they need practice with verbal reasoning. Together, these skills build the language comprehension strand of the reading rope, which allows students to become more strategic readers.
Scarborough also identifies that strategy is not enough when students are learning to read. They also must have the skills necessary to become increasingly automatic readers. These skills are found in the second strand of the reading rope, the word recognition strand. In order to successfully recognize words, students need to have phonological awareness skills, decoding skills, and word recognition skills. Students cannot solely depend on “sounding out” words any more than they can solely depend on memorizing all the words to become fluent readers.
Language Comprehension? Word Recognition? Or Both?
The Science of Reading supports that in order for our students to become fluent, automatic readers, their instruction must include instruction that develops both their language comprehension and their word recognition. It must provide them with opportunities to both build phonics skills and automatic word recognition skills.
The Science of Reading isn’t a pendulum shift, it is a bridge connecting many long-held, beloved practices. It is the sifting of the cream of instructional practice to the top, so we can offer kids the very best.
Inside A Science of Reading Classroom
“In primary, we are teaching kids how to read, so that in intermediate, they are reading to learn.”
Raise your hand if you have heard that… Me! I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have heard this phrase as a classroom teacher, an interventionist, and an MTSS coordinator. Across my entire career, I have heard parents, teachers, colleagues, professors, district leaders, and curriculum developers say this.
But here’s the thing… in a Science of Reading Classroom, we do both. Learning to read is not exclusive to primary grades and we certainly don’t wait to use reading as a tool for learning and enjoyment until children are fluent readers.
When I first started teaching, I taught primary grades. I held a deep belief that my job was phonics, decoding, spelling, and fluency. My job was to just get them to read- they could figure out how to establish meaning once they got into the intermediate grades.
About 5 years into my career, we adopted a new curriculum. Within our first-grade units, we of course had explicit phonics instruction but there were also so many embedded word recognition skills- vocabulary development activities, opportunities to discuss texts, identify literacy structures, and build background knowledge. That is when it clicked for me- regardless of age, my job isn’t strictly phonics, it’s both language comprehension and word recognition skills.
Fast forward to today… in my Science of Reading classroom, we are still spending a lot of time with word recognition strategies- phonological awareness, phonics, and sight words. AND we are also spending a lot of time building our language, understanding how English works, and learning about grammar and syntax (even in the primary grades). We are finding ways to naturally talk about literacy elements and structures, and we are building our background knowledge with exposure to a variety of texts and topics.
We are no longer learning to read so we can read to learn later- we are doing both, right now.
Science of Reading Foundational Skills
We’ve already talked about how reading is a complex skill and it requires many skills to grow students into fluent readers who comprehend what they are reading. The best way to support readers in a Science of Reading classroom is to intentionally plan ways to integrate subskills that support both word recognition and language comprehension into your lessons.
Word Recognition Skills
Word recognition is the ability of a reader to see a word and recognize the word quickly and accurately. When we think of the tools necessary for young readers to recognize words quickly and accurately, we think of 3 subskills- phonological awareness, decoding, and sight word recognition.
Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness begins long before a child starts learning the alphabetic principle and decoding. It is an auditory skill that requires children to listen for, identify, and manipulate sounds auditorily. I like to call it the “eyes closed” or the “in the dark” skill- because it could be done entirely in the dark. Phonological awareness does not utilize graphemes or printed letters to cue- rather it is just the ability to listen and identify or manipulate sounds auditorily.
When we ask children to identify beginning, middle, or end sounds in a word, rhyme words, auditorily blend sounds, or separate the sounds they hear in a word, we are building their phonological awareness. Being able to manipulate sounds in this way is essential to building automaticity in word recognition as a fluent reader.
Decoding
Decoding is perhaps the most popular and most practiced skill in the reading rope. Anytime we are teaching children how to sound out words and blend printed sounds to determine the meaning of a word, children are decoding. Decoding is a foundational reading skill that takes time and practice and over time builds fluency and automaticity as children read.
Sight Word Recognition
Even if we prepare students with the best decoding skills possible, not all words are decodable, so children also must have a bank of sight words or memorized words to help them bridge decodable and non-decodable portions of text when they read.
However, not all sight words are non-decodable. Sometimes sight words are words that just occur frequently in a text, so knowing them from memory versus decoding them every time we come across them allows for more fluent reading.
Finally, some sight words have decodable and non-decodable parts, like the word said. In this word, both the s and the d make their expected sounds and are therefore decodable. The tricky part of the word, or the part that needs to be memorized is the ai. Typically, we would expect the ai vowel team to make the long a sound, but in the word said, the ai are actually making more of a short e sound. This is the part of the word that is not playing by the rules and therefore needs to be memorized or recognized by sight.
Language Comprehension Skills
Where the Science of Reading differs from previous reading pedagogies is the inclusion of equal emphasis on both word recognition skills and language comprehension skills. The Science of Reading places equal importance on BOTH of these pieces of literacy, one should not be more dominant than the other. You cannot build a Science of Reading classroom that strictly focuses on decoding and word recognition skills, students need instruction and practice with language comprehension skills as well. While word recognition is going to allow students to read words, language comprehension is going to allow students to make meaning of the words, phrases, and sentences they read.
So what exactly is included in language comprehension?
Background Knowledge
Background knowledge is the information, facts, and concepts that students already know about a topic. Background knowledge can be built from experiences, from learning about topics or reading informational text about concepts. We also build background knowledge from hearing about another person’s experiences. The more opportunities children have to experience life, either firsthand or by learning through someone else’s experience, the more background knowledge they will have about topics. When students have knowledge about a topic, they can anchor new learning and retrieve meaningful vocabulary and ideas that help build their comprehension.
Vocabulary
Early in my career when I thought of vocabulary, I would automatically think of oral language and words kids knew. As someone who is naturally verbal (I am a talker), I just assumed that vocabulary was built and I didn’t really quite understand the depth and complexity of vocabulary and reading.
As I have unpacked the research around the Science of Reading, I have learned that vocabulary is an essential component of comprehension and growing readers. If students do not have the knowledge and meaning of words, they cannot anchor what they are reading to anything meaningful.
I recently attended a professional development around vocabulary and the importance of explicit vocabulary instruction for students. As adults, we watched a video about sailing. I live in a landlocked state, so it is safe to assume that I, like most of the adults in the room, had little to no knowledge about sailing. My one reference point about sailing comes from an episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.- the one where Rachel is teaching Joey how to sail. At the end of the informational video, we were asked to label everything on a boat we had just learned about. Without any knowledge to anchor the meaning of the words to my new learning, I couldn’t remember hardly anything from the video, let alone demonstrate any understanding of what I had just watched.
Vocabulary is built for children in so many different ways- exposure, explicit teaching, experiences, reading, and engaging in conversations. The more we can provide rich language opportunities for students, the more we are increasing the pool of vocabulary they can pull from to make meaning of the things they read and learn about.
Language Structures
“Hair my is brown.”- If we heard a student say this in the classroom, as teachers we might be concerned. This student has a misunderstanding of the language structures that we use in English to clearly communicate an idea. Language structures are the rules about the arrangement of words and phrases to create effective communication. While we often think of language structure and oral language skills, language structure also plays a key role in comprehension.
When children have a solid understanding of language structure- how the words and phrases we use connect together to create meaning, they can both communicate and understand more effectively. As a speaker and writer, language structure allows students to clearly and efficiently communicate their ideas. But the importance of language structure knowledge doesn’t stop there. As a reader and listener, having a deep understanding of language structure allows students to process information quickly and efficiently, and allows students to anticipate what might come next in a sentence- aiding in fluent and accurate reading skills.
Verbal Reasoning
When I first started to learn about The Science of Reading, every infographic would list “Verbal Reasoning: inference, metaphor, etc.” as verbal reasoning skills. As a teacher, I think this led me to misunderstand the complexity of verbal reasoning skills- if my kids know how to infer, and check, they’ve got verbal reasoning skills. Verbal reasoning is more complex, it is a person’s ability to read or understand what they read or hear and draw conclusions, making inferences, and synthesizing new information into what they already know. Does that include making inferences? Yes. Does it include many other complex skills? Also, YES!
Verbal reasoning is the ability of children to problem solve and create meaning using words. When we think about this link to reading, it is the ability to problem solve and reason what has been read explicitly, and make sense and meaning from what was not stated but implied through other “clues” in the text. As a reader, if I read, “She put on her raincoat, grabbed her umbrella, and headed out the door”- verbal reasoning would allow me to answer the question, “What was the weather like in the story?” It is likely rainy because the main character needed an umbrella and raincoat.
While verbal reasoning requires cognitively complex skills like inference and synthesizing, it is also a skill that even our youngest children can work within and grow. Additionally, helping to support students with background knowledge and vocabulary provides students with more touch points to pull from and can increase their verbal reasoning skills.
Literacy Knowledge
I like to consider literacy knowledge the playbook of literacy. It is the “rules” of how literacy works. Literacy knowledge includes beginner skills- how to hold a book, how print works, the directionality of reading, and more complex skills like the traits of various genres, the purpose of various texts, and the conventions used within literature and text. Helping young students understand how books “work”- how to hold books, turn pages, read left to right, and sweep back at the end of the line, are all ways we build early literacy knowledge. As students grow, exposure to a variety of texts for a variety of purposes and explicit instruction within those features of the texts are all ways that we can build literacy knowledge for students.
How to Teach Reading
The Science of Reading tells us that reading is a COMPLEX skill. It requires so many sub-skills that are woven together to build both fluency and comprehension. I am committed to supporting teachers with each of these complex skills and building classrooms where all of these skills can align to grow readers. It is one thing to know the research, but it is entirely another to put the research into action.
I have created separate posts for each of the sub-skills included in the Science of Reading to help support teachers with how they can embed those skills into a well-rounded literacy block.
A New View on the Science of Reading
As I have grown as an educator, I have really leaned into, we don’t know what we don’t know. For so many years I used practices that were not aligned to the Science of Reading because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Now, I know more and I continue to research, grow, and learn so that I can provide the best instruction possible to my students and so that I can help other teachers provide the best instruction possible to their students as well.
I hope that as we continue to grow as educators, we understand that the Science of Reading is not a trendy buzzword that will soon be replaced with a swing of the pendulum. Instead, I hope that we grow to understand that the Science of Reading is a powerful body of evidence that supports instruction that maximizes the skills and neuro pathways kids need to become fluent, comprehending readers. My hope is also that we understand we need both phonics and vocabulary, we need both decoding and automatic word recognition, and we need both instruction in how to read and how we use our reading to learn- at all grades. We are no longer learning to read in primary so we can read to learn in intermediate.
I hope that you’ll continue to grow alongside me so that we can offer the best reading instruction to our students.
