10 Things Teachers Should Know About the Science of Reading

Reading is a fundamental skill, and getting it right in the early years can make all the difference to a child’s future success. Because early reading is so important to get right, many educators are turning to the Science of Reading to inform the structure and content of their reading instructional practices.

The Science of Reading, as defined by the Reading League in 2022, “is 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.” Reading research suggests that 95% of students can learn to read with instruction and programs based on the Science of Reading — compared to just 30% without it.

However, there are some common misconceptions about the Science of Reading that can hinder its effective implementation. We spoke to CORE Educational Services Specialist Kristina Jaramillo about the ten things teachers need to know about the Science of Reading. Here’s what she had to say. 

10 Things Teachers Should Know About the Science of Reading 

1. The Science of Reading Is Not a Fad

Teaching trends may come and go as the decades pass, but the Science of Reading, based on over 50 years of research in multiple fields, provides the evidence as to what works in literacy instruction and what does not.

Therefore, it is not a fad or trend but a verified way to help students of all backgrounds, levels, and abilities learn to read. The Science of Reading demystifies the process of learning to read and provides specific tools and methodologies to help teachers teach reading effectively.

2. All Kids Benefit from The Science of Reading

Although reading has traditionally been taught in many different ways,  you might be surprised to learn that all children learn to read the same way. This is because reading isn’t a skill that develops naturally — we all have to build the neural pathways in our brains that allow us to read through “explicit instruction and deliberate practice,” according to Kristina. 

She explains that some teachers think phonics instruction isn’t necessary, but they’re referring to the roughly 40% of children who learn to read regardless of whether it’s taught badly or well. The other 60% need explicit instruction to learn how to read, and even the 40% of children who learn to read easily benefit from explicit instruction to help them learn to spell and break down longer words.

Kristina recommends that teachers watch this video by Stanislas Dehaene to understand how children learn to read. 

3. It’s Okay to Have Made Mistakes

If you realize you’ve been using ineffective approaches to teaching in the past, don’t worry. Kristina shares that at the beginning of her career, she was trained as a Whole Language teacher, but when she began teaching, she quickly realized that she didn’t know how to teach children to read. 

While it’s okay to have made mistakes in the past, it’s not okay to keep teaching using ineffective practices once you know better. Implementing Science of Reading practices may look different from what you’re used to, so Kristina recommends keeping an open heart and mind.  

4. Teaching Reading Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated

Teachers love incorporating new fancy tools and methodologies into their teaching practices, but the reality is they don’t need bells and whistles and pretty stuff to teach students effectively. 

Students can learn to read very effectively with just a few simple tools — such as letter/sound cards, dry-erase boards and markers, and decodable text (texts where they apply their phonic skills in reading actual text).

Students also do not need worksheets, computer programs, or Pinterest activities to learn how to read. They need a high-quality curriculum, opportunities to practice word reading in connected text, and teacher-led opportunities to develop reading comprehension strategies in high-quality complex text.  

5. There Is No Magic Bullet

Teaching reading effectively is a combination of teacher knowledge, good assessments, high-quality materials, explicit instruction, and lots of opportunities for students to practice reading. 

Understanding the Science of Reading and implementing it effectively are not the same. There is no perfect reading program, and teacher knowledge is the key to implementing programs effectively.  

6. The Simple View of Reading and Scarborough’s Reading Rope

Kristina wishes that all teachers knew about the Simple View of Reading and Scarborough’s Rope. The Simple View of Reading explains that comprehension requires both word recognition and language comprehension — it’s not an either-or.

Scarborough’s Rope takes the analysis even further by looking at the components that make up word recognition (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency) and the components that build language recognition (such as background knowledge, vocabulary, use of metaphors and similes, print awareness, and understanding genre). 

There’s so much more to teaching reading than phonics — you’re building word recognition and language comprehension simultaneously, which are the two sides of the rope. 

If you teach young children who don’t yet have word recognition, you can build their background knowledge and vocabulary through diverse content-rich read-alouds while students are still learning how to decode. They don’t need to be able to decode to build background knowledge and vocabulary. 

7. The Science of Reading Applies to All Students

Because our brains all learn to read the same way, the Science of Reading works for all students — including ones with dyslexia or other reading difficulties and learners with linguistic differences. All students benefit from systematic and explicit reading instruction that includes phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension.  

If a child is learning to decode and they don’t have the language skills they need to understand what they’re decoding (for example, in the case of English language learners), by the time they develop the necessary language skills, they will already have the ability to decode. Therefore, it’s essential to teach decoding skills to all students so they don’t fall behind later on. 

8. Teachers Need Training to Implement the Science of Reading

Sometimes, strategies such as Sound Walls or Heart Words start trending on social media, and teachers think that if they implement one of these things, they are implementing the Science of Reading. 

This approach is not the right way to teach the Science of Reading. Teachers need to have a solid understanding of the Science of Reading to be able to implement these tools effectively and in the right contexts. “Just changing a couple of things in your classroom is not going to have the impact you think it’s going to,” Kristina says.

9. Feelings Do not Equate to Evidence

Teachers will often rely on their instincts rather than data to determine the effectiveness of their instruction, but it’s essential to look at the data to see the real impact of your work. 

If you think your instruction methods are effective, ask yourself — which students are learning? Is it the 40% that would have learned anyway, regardless of the instructional methods used? Are you in an affluent community where the kids who don’t learn to read have access to private tutors? 

A data-based approach to teaching requires valid and reliable assessment tools. Teachers need to look at the data and make changes in their instruction based on what it tells them, including targeted interventions where needed. 

The bottom line? Base your assessments on data, not feelings.

10. Literacy Instruction Is a Civil Rights Issue

Teachers have a huge influence on their students’ outcomes later in life. The choices you make about how to teach reading will determine which college they go to and what careers they pursue. 

All students deserve evidence-based instruction, and teachers need to make sure they give students the tools to participate in grade-level reading and thinking.

The Science of Reading 5 Core Skills

The National Reading Panel (NRP) Report in 2000 identified the following five elements as the most important foundational skills students need to become proficient readers.

1. Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is recognizing that words are composed of individual sounds that can be blended together for reading and pulled apart or segmented for spelling. 

2. Phonics

Phonics is a method of teaching students how to connect the graphemes (letters) with the phonemes (sounds) and how to use this letter/sound relationship to read and spell words. 

3. Fluency

Reading fluency is reading text with sufficient speed and accuracy to support comprehension. The practice of developing fluency in children includes reading accuracy, reading rate, and reading expression. Instruction in reading fluency should include assisting students in developing their ability to use typical speech patterns and appropriate intonation while reading aloud.

4. Vocabulary

Vocabulary is the understanding of individual word meanings in a text. Teachers should develop students’ vocabulary knowledge through direct and indirect methods of teaching, and students should be exposed to vocabulary both orally and through reading.

5. Comprehension

Comprehension is the understanding of connected text and is the ultimate goal of reading.

Help Your Students Develop the Reading Skills They Need

The Science of Reading is a powerful, effective approach to teaching reading based on a large, interdisciplinary body of research developed over half a century. Incorporating it into your teaching practice can help all students develop the literacy skills they need to succeed in life. 

If you want to develop or deepen your knowledge of the Science of Reading, you may be interested in CORE’s Online Elementary Reading Academy. This seven-week course will provide you with the skills and resources to deliver standards-aligned and evidence-based reading instruction based on the Science of Reading.

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CORE Academic Quarterly Newsletter, Fall 2022

Welcome to the Fall 2022 edition of the CORE Academic Quarterly newsletter!

In this edition of the Academic Quarterly, the Reading Expert discusses early screening for students who may be at risk for reading difficulties or dyslexia and evaluating a child for a diagnosis of dyslexia.

The Marvelous Mathematician explores effectively utilizing student mistakes for effective learning.

In the Leadership Corner, we’re spotlighting the wealth of resources available from The National Center on Improving Literacy (NCIL) which focuses on providing evidence-based resources for schools, families, and state agencies to “screen, identify, and teach students with literacy-related disabilities, including dyslexia.”

START READING!

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Pivot Learning and CORE Learning to Merge with UnboundEd

This newly-merged organization will become the largest equity-focused K-12 education development organization in the country

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 13, 2022

PRESS CONTACT
Clay Willis, cwillis@pivotlearning.org

Today, Pivot Learning, CORE Learning, and UnboundEd announced they will merge this fall under the UnboundEd banner. The three organizations support teachers to drive long-needed changes in learning, especially in the highest-need schools. By joining, they’ll have the reach to support far more schools and districts to accelerate student learning and close gaps in a crucial moment for America’s students.

The merger will create the largest K-12 educator development organization in the country with an explicit focus on improving teaching and learning for underserved students, serving some 400 districts. The merged organization will be led by Lacey Robinson, a veteran educator and fierce advocate for educational equity, who currently serves as UnboundEd’s CEO. 

“The past couple of years have made a challenge into a crisis for students on the margins,” said Lacey Robinson, UnboundEd CEO. “We know that with the right supports, teachers can massively change outcomes. UnboundEd, Pivot Learning and CORE Learning are coming together to deliver on that promise. I’m honored to lead this effort.”

Each of these organizations provides educator and student supports at different levels in K-12 education, from districts to schools to classrooms. The merged organization will be able to support positive change at every level, from district leadership to daily classroom practice.  

“The recent Nation’s Report Card put a spotlight on the growing and alarming gaps in this country,”  said John B. King Jr., president of the Education Trust and former U.S. Secretary of Education. “Pivot and UnboundEd have a proven record of delivering on the promise of equity in the classroom. It’s an incredibly important time for them to join forces and serve more teachers and kids.”

UnboundEd designs professional learning for teachers to advance equity through high-quality instruction. Pivot Learning works with educators to design and implement evidence-based solutions to their greatest challenges in achieving educational justice. While the Pivot Learning brand will sunset in the coming year, the merged organization will remain dedicated to supporting teachers to fundamentally change the dynamics of classrooms for students on the margins, combating systemic injustices children have faced for generations.

CORE Learning provides professional development and ongoing support to implement high-quality curriculum and equitable and rigorous instruction. It was acquired by Pivot in 2017, and will remain a subsidiary of the merged organization. Robert Sheffield will continue to serve as President of CORE Learning.

Arun Ramanathan, Pivot Learning CEO, will transition to a senior advisor role this fall to help oversee and facilitate the merger.

“This is the right direction at the right moment, and while it’s bittersweet to begin stepping away, I’m excited to support this transition,” Dr. Ramanathan said. “This next chapter is one of rapid growth and deepening impact. Together, we’ll accomplish more for students and educators and advance equity in schools and systems across the country.”

“These organizations don’t parachute in to talk at you, they engage to discover what’s best in each of us and lift it up,” said Dr. Sharon Contreras, former superintendent of Guilford County Schools in North Carolina. “Bringing them together means schools can look to one team for change that spans from the superintendent’s suite to the student’s seat.”

As the merger proceeds, UnboundEd will continue to update its website with new information. 

 

About our current organizations

UnboundEd
UnboundEd designs learning for educators that exemplifies equitable instruction so that students experience grade-level, engaging, affirming, and meaningful instruction. 

Pivot Learning
In pursuit of educational justice, Pivot Learning partners with teachers and leaders to improve instructional coherence and ensure a rigorous, relevant, and inclusive public education for all students.

CORE
CORE Learning provides teachers and coaches with evidence-based professional learning experiences and ongoing support to implement high-quality curricula and ensure equitable, rigorous instruction.

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CORE Learning Launches Math Advisory Board

by Cyndia Acker-Ramirez, Director, Professional Learning, CORE Learning

In August, CORE Learning convened the inaugural meeting of our newly formed CORE Math Advisory Board, a group of teachers, instructional leaders, and researchers with expertise spanning math instruction, assessment, teacher education, and professional learning. This advisory board brings to CORE deep knowledge and expertise about the challenges and successes of math professional learning and curriculum implementation.

“At CORE Learning, we are striving to be the preeminent K12 educator development organization in the country,” shared CORE President Robert Sheffield. “We are convening the Math Advisory Board to learn how CORE can improve the learning experiences of teachers. We know that this group of advisors comes with the know-how to lead us in the right direction!”

The CORE Math Advisory Board is designed to ensure the work of CORE remains well connected to the realities of the field. Educators come together to discuss teachers’ greatest needs, identify areas of learning that will be most impactful for teachers and students, and offer professional development guidance for instructional leaders. Throughout the next school year, members will engage with CORE staff to provide current knowledge, critical thinking, and analysis of professional learning programs and their impact on student learning. 

Specifically, the board will help CORE:

• Prioritize areas in math education and professional learning where we can have the most significant impact on students and teachers;
• Identify best practices in instructional design and program development that will enhance the professional learning experience; and
• Design innovative and effective professional learning experiences for educators.

During the first session, we discussed shifts in thinking around math teaching and learning that have endured over the past ten years, as well as critical needs for students, teachers, and instructional leaders in helping all students be successful in math.

Three key trends emerged:

• Elementary math classrooms have become more focused on student-led discourse, creating a classroom environment that promotes curiosity and critical thinking.
• Secondary math classrooms, particularly in high school, have seen the least amount of change in their teaching practices.
• There has been an increase in demand for more individualized professional learning for teachers with a focus on student-centered learning experiences.

The next board meeting, during which we will be collectively reviewing and revising our CORE service offerings with a focus on classroom, school, and district needs, is scheduled for October 28, 2022. We look forward to sharing more insights with you then.

Math Advisory Board Members:

• Cyndia Acker-Ramirez (Director, Professional Learning, CORE Learning)
• Dean Ballard (Director of Mathematics, CORE Learning)
• Robert Sheffield (President, CORE Learning)
• Jennifer Bay-Williams (Professor, University of Louisville)
• Christie Bledsoe (Assistant Superintendent, Priority Charter Schools)
• Kyndall Brown (Executive Director, California Mathematics Project)
• Ben Clarke (Associate Professor, University of Oregon)
• Kathy Clemmer (Math Education Specialist)
• Laura Desimone (Professor and Director of Research, University of Delaware)
• Shelly Jallow (State Monitor, Rochester City School District)
• Jennifer Langer-Osuna (Associate Professor, Stanford University)
• Angela Pilcher (Curriculum Specialist, Stockton Unified School District)
• Deb Schwantes-McCambpell

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Phonics instruction is not enough for English Learners, or anyone. But it’s still foundational for all. Copy

by Dr. Claude Goldenberg, Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education, emeritus, Stanford University

The newest front in the never-ending wars and squabbles over how to teach reading involves English language learners (EL), students learning to read (and write) in English while simultaneously learning to speak and understand it.

In the wake of renewed prominence of research supporting an early focus on phonics and decoding (aka the “science of reading”), EL advocates around the country have been sounding alarms.

For example, a recent EdSource article led with the following: “As California launches a new literacy campaign, some advocates worry that for English learners, a focus on sounding out words will come at the expense of learning the meaning of words.”

In Colorado: “Colorado’s emphasis on phonics in reading could hurt English language learners, advocates say.”

The concern is understandable. Learning to decode words if you don’t understand what they mean seems pointless. In addition, solely focusing on phonics during reading instruction provides a meager literacy diet.

But the concern misses the larger point that learning to read requires integrating written language with oral language. This integration is impossible if you can’t recognize—read—the words on the page accurately and automatically followed by verifying the words’ accuracy and meaning.

Word recognition is foundational to reading. Knowing word meanings is important for confirmation. Among skilled readers, the process works automatically, effortlessly, and efficiently. Beginning and early readers need varying degrees of support, scaffolding, and direct teaching to acquire these skills. Some require very little and appear to “catch on” easily; others need a great deal of direct teaching; most are somewhere in between.

This larger point applies to readers in general, not just ELs. I’ll use a metaphor to try to illustrate.

Imagine two roads that begin separately and eventually converge at some desired destination. One road is, let’s say, the “road to the code,” where you learn how the sounds of a spoken language are represented in writing. Progress along this road is relatively straightforward, although it has its challenges. It involves developing phonological awareness, knowledge of letters, letter combinations, and corresponding sounds, and how to use that knowledge to identify written words, often referred to as “phonics” or “decoding.”

I’ll call the other road the “road to understanding.” Here’s where you learn how to make sense of the world as you experience it either directly or through someone’s oral retelling or through electronic media or in written texts. To proceed successfully along this road, you need to learn aspects of language that carry meaning (e.g., vocabulary, morphology, syntax), background knowledge and knowledge of the world, and comprehension and thinking skills and strategies.

Eventually, the roads must converge at their destination: full and competent literacy. The roads start out separately because they proceed in different parts of the brain. Metaphorically, they originate in different geographic locations and traverse distinct landscapes.

Successful travel through the code road in an alphabetic language essentially requires knowing and being able to apply the sound-symbol mapping system of the language’s orthography. Letters are human inventions developed to represent the sounds of speech. There is nothing inherently meaningful about letters, although since their names typically contain the sounds they represent, learning letter names helps connect them to those sounds. The whole idea of learning to read is to make those letters and sounds meaningful by connecting them to meaningful oral language.

Here’s a critical point: Research has shown that the best way to help learners master the road to the code is through direct and explicit instruction in what is sometimes called the “alphabetic principle,” that is, the basic understanding that printed letters represent speech sounds and using that understanding (aka phonics and decoding) to read words. (The issues are somewhat different in nonalphabetic writing systems.)

Mastering the code road is no guarantee of full literacy. Learners must also successfully travel along the path to understanding. This path can be complex and winding. It typically commences even before the road code appears. Explicit teaching contributes to progress along the path to understanding, but so do—perhaps even to a greater extent—direct experiences with the world, interactions with others, and planned and unplanned events and activities.

The path to understanding matters immensely if you are to get to the ultimate destination of literacy. If you can read accurately but without understanding, full literacy is impossible.

Similarly, if you don’t travel well and far on the code road—e.g., someone tells you to take a shortcut by guessing at words—your path to uniting with the road to understanding will be truncated. You won’t get to your destination of full literacy. Why? Because if you don’t successfully traverse the road to the code, your world will be limited to what doesn’t require accurate and fluent reading of written language.

The necessity of traveling along two distinct but ultimately converging paths is as true for English learners as it is for learners who already speak English. This has been amply demonstrated by neurocognitive and neurolinguistic studies involving many different first and second languages and learners around the world.

For English learners or, more generally, students learning to read in a language they are simultaneously learning to speak and understand, there is an important qualification: Care must be taken that words (and text) they are being taught to read are meaningful to them.

We can typically assume that students learning to read in a language they already know already understand words used in beginning and early reading instruction, words such as run, dog, me, and can. We can’t make that assumption with second-language literacy learners. As we take them along the code road, we must also make sure they’re making corresponding progress on the road to understanding the words the code road is helping them learn to read.

This has been well documented in studies by Sharon Vaughn, Linnea Ehri, and their colleagues. These researchers have found that students learning to read in English while gaining English proficiency, but experiencing early reading difficulties, make greater progress when instruction is focused on helping them progress along both roads.

Children were taught the foundations of word recognition directly and explicitly. They were also taught the meaning of the words they were being taught to read and to use those meanings to cross-check what they read using their developing word reading skills.

Note that I’m referring here to English learners learning to read in English. If they are in a bilingual program and learning to read in their home language, learning to read while learning the language is not an issue. While learning to read in your home language might be preferable for any number of reasons, the fact is a large majority of English learners learn to read in English as they are learning English.

The implication is straightforward: English learners need to be helped—taught—to understand the words and text they are being taught to read. But they need to learn, explicitly and directly, the foundations of word recognition to accurately read the words. Both are essential if these students are to become fully, functionally, and successfully literate.

About the author

Claude Goldenberg, Ph.D. is Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education, emeritus, Stanford University. He is author of Successful school change: Creating settings to improve teaching and learning (Teachers College); co-author with Rhoda Coleman of Promoting academic achievement among English Learners: A guide to the research (Corwin); and co-editor with Aydin Durgunoglu of Language and literacy development in bilingual settings (Guilford). He has published and been on the editorial boards of various literacy and education academic and professional journals. Previous projects focused on improving literacy achievement among English Learners in elementary and middle school, language and literacy development among Mexican children in Mexico, and a randomized control trial of an early literacy intervention in Rwanda. Current projects include consulting for the US Department of Justice on English Learner issues and chairing a research advisory panel on early childhood education for Arizona’s First Things First.

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CORE Academic Quarterly Newsletter, Spring 2022

Welcome to the Spring 2022 edition of the CORE Academic Quarterly newsletter!

In this edition of the Academic Quarterly, the Reading Expert resurfaces an important topic related to the language comprehension portion of Scarborough’s Reading Rope—language structures, or syntax.

The Marvelous Mathematician explores how developing teachers as self-directed learners can help organizations make the necessary changes in teaching approaches to support the increased emphasis on exploration and investigation through equitable and engaging school experiences outlined in many of the new math frameworks and standards that are being adopted.

In the Leadership Corner, you’ll find resources to help navigate next steps in hiring, training, and retaining teachers and other school staff in a time of higher-than-usual vacancies.

START READING!

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New Study Confirms that SIPPS Research-Based, Systematic Approach to Literacy Instruction Accelerates Reading Development

Professional learning and job-embedded coaching on how to deliver explicit reading instruction are essential to improving literacy outcomes for all students. But just as critical is the use of high-quality, evidence-based reading curricula, particularly when supporting striving readers at all grade levels. In a time when one in three K–3 students require major and systemic reading intervention, CORE is proud to partner with the Center for the Collaborative Classroom to provide professional learning for their literacy programs, including SIPPS (Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words) which a recent study found significantly boosts elementary school reading skills.

“Across the nation, elementary school teachers have found SIPPS to be a ‘secret sauce’ in helping their students gain the literacy skills and foundational knowledge needed to succeed in school,” Collaborative Classroom CEO Kelly Stuart says. “In study after study, including this most recent one of SIPPS usage in Pasco County, the results confirm what educators have long known: When it comes to teaching students to read, SIPPS works.”

The districts CORE partners with have found similar success, including in Pajaro Valley Unified School District (CA), Woodbine Elementary School (CA), and Lodi Unified (CA) where CORE has provided assistance with the implementation of SIPPS as well as instructional coaching. Three studies conducted by SEG Measurement in Pajaro Valley found that students in those classrooms where teachers received CORE professional development support achieved greater growth in their reading skills.

Learn more about SIPPS and read the results of Collaborative Classroom’s six-month study conducted during the fall semester of the 2021–2022 school year in Pasco County, FL.

If your district would like support with the implementation of SIPPS, including helping teachers understand the logistics of the program and master the routines and materials so that they can deliver instruction confidently and effectively, please reach out to CORE.

 

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