What is the science of reading?
- The science of reading is the “emerging consensus from many related disciplines, based on literally thousands of studies, supported by hundreds of millions of research dollars, conducted across the world in many languages”
What are some examples of practices that are supported by the science of reading?
- Teaching phonics systematically, explicitly, and cumulatively
- Phonics instruction for 30-45 minutes per day using different instructional materials
- Hands on instruction
- Presentation of a concept, practice exercises, and then direct application
- Teaching phoneme awareness (awareness of the sounds that make up spoken words, the ability to manipulate those sounds, and mastery of the links between speech and print)
- Helping students build their vocabulary and background knowledge in order to improve their language comprehension and reading comprehension
What should teachers NOT do?
- Teachers should not teach their kids to rely on context and pictures to identify printed words.
What skills should teachers focus on?
- Awareness of speech sounds, segmentation, and manipulation of sounds
- Letter formation and writing by hand
- Phoneme-grapheme correspondences
- Spelling patterns
- Meaningful word parts (morphemes)
How should these skills be taught?
- Rich content learning
- Reading aloud
- Classroom discussion
- Deliberate study of language at the level of sentences, paragraphs, and longer texts
