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This article discussed the four brain regions involved in reading acquisition and compared the brain scans of struggling and strong readers. It was found that struggling readers have developed compensatory strategies using the right side of their brain, which is insufficient for reading acquisition. The brain connects the phonology to the graphemes. We connect meaning processors to recognize words and use the same parts of the brain for spoken and written language when it comes to speech. Effective instruction needs to include and connect context, meaning, phonics, and orthographics.

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This blog post was part of a three-blog series about the science of reading and how it differs from balanced literacy. It discusses the book "Why Johnny Can't Read," published in the 1950s, and why American schools were failing to teach students how to read proficiently. The whole language debate in the 1960s gave way to balanced literacy in the 1990s, which became the instructional method most often used by 72% of teachers.

In 2000, the National Reading Panel determined that effective reading instruction required five key concepts: phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. In recent years the evidence-backed approach is making headlines in a concerted effort to turn the tide against low reading scores.

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6/30/2022
This post is Part One of a three-blog series about the science of reading and balanced literacy. This series will explore what the science of reading is, how it differs from balanced literacy, and why these differences matter. In this blog post, we will dive into the history of different literacy approaches and how we got to where we are today.

It's hard to imagine a skill more foundational to life success than reading. Unfortunately, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only about 35% of American children read proficiently or better. Even more worryingly, these low figures are nothing new; literacy rates in American schools have been low for decades, and they are largely remaining stagnant rather than improving.

For decades, educators and policymakers have debated about the best way to fix this pressing problem and teach children to read. Nicknamed "the reading wars," this longstanding battle began with two camps: "whole language" and phonics.
Whole Language
The "whole language" approach got its start in the 1800s through Horace Mann, a politician who is today widely known as " the father of American education." A fierce advocate for literacy and education, Mann warned against teaching children to sound out words letter by letter because he worried that it would distract them from the words' meaning. As the American public education system grew and developed, many schools followed Mann's lead and taught children to memorize the appearance of words instead of teaching them to decode the letters.

With a literature focus, whole language immersed students in reading and writing, operating under the assumption that learning to read comes naturally, and students would gain the phonics skills they needed within the context of their reading.

By the 1950s, the whole language approach was considered the " conventional wisdom" of teaching students to read, asserting that children should read for meaning from the very beginning by memorizing sight words and using context and picture cues. This can be seen in the " look-say " reading method that led to the Dick and Jane books that filled public schools from the 1940s to the 1960s.
Phonics
On the other side of this debate were those who believed explicitly teaching the relationship between letters and sounds, or phonics, was the most effective literacy method. English phonics instruction is even older than the whole language approach and can be traced back to the New England Primer, published in 1690. In fact, phonics was the popular way to learn reading in the 1800s until Mann advocated for a whole-word method.

Phonics follows a bottom-up approach (letters and sounds before words), compared to whole language's top-down approach (words first). Proponents of phonics placed an emphasis on skill-based instruction. Students would do drills to learn the sounds and letter blends that make up words, before moving into comprehension.

While whole language dominated American education for decades, phonics instruction continued to hold on, with advocates such as Rudolf Flesch bringing about a phonics revival.
Why Johnny Can't Read-and What We Did About It
By the 1950s, most American children were receiving whole language instruction. The issue came to a head when bestselling author Flesch began investigating why American schools were failing to teach their pupils to read proficiently. In 1955, Flesch published a book called Why Johnny Can't Read-and What You Can Do About It, the thesis of which was that the lack of explicit phonics instruction in American schools prevented children from learning to read properly. He argued that the average American third-grade student was "unable to decipher 90% of his own speaking and listening vocabulary" when he saw it written on paper, and that the solution was to teach students to decode letters.

Why Johnny Can't Read sparked a national debate, leading to the "reading wars" as we know them today.
The Rise of Science of Reading
By the 1960s, other researchers began investigating how children learn to read, and the evidence that the whole language approach wasn't cutting it continued to mount. In 1967, after conducting a four-year study of the existing research, interviewing proponents of the various methods of instruction, and analyzing different reading series, Jeanne Chall, head of the Harvard Reading Laboratory, published Learning to Read: The Great Debate.

Like Flesch, Chall determined that phonics instruction, specifically explicit, systematic phonics, was superior to the conventional whole language approach. In future publications, her research findings showed that a child must first learn to read before he can read to learn, and that explicit reading instruction would lead to better results, without compromising comprehension.

Chall's work, and that of researchers across education, neuroscience, and psychology, would eventually become a part of the body of research known as the science of reading.
But Whole Language Remains on Top
While Chall, Flesch, and other advocates of evidence-based instruction shifted the needle to include more phonics instruction in schools in the 1960s, by the 70s and 80s, whole language remained the predominant literacy method in public schools. Consequently, literacy rates remained largely stagnant.

This is largely due to vocal proponents of whole language such as Kenneth Goodman and Frank Smith. Goodman described reading as a "psycholinguistic guessing game" while Smith hypothesized that reading was as natural as speaking and that phonics rules were too complex.

Research from the 1970s indicated that poor readers, not strong readers, relied on whole language's context approach to word recognition. Good readers did not skip unknown letters or words (as recommended by the whole language approach) but processed all the visual information in the text. Further evidence showed that to become a strong reader, children needed strong phonemic awareness skills. However, as these findings were only published in peer-reviewed journals and academic conferences, the evidence did not yet have a significant impact on educational practices.
The Emergence of Balanced Literacy
In the 1990s, a new approach arose: Balanced literacy. The term originated in California in response to low reading scores, with the intent of incorporating elements of both whole language and phonics.

According to Fountas and Pinnell (1996), balanced literacy is a "philosophical orientation that assumes that reading and writing achievement are developed through instruction and support in multiple environments using various approaches that differ by level of teacher support and child control." In other words, balanced literacy looks to balance several aspects of instruction, not just skill-focused and meaning-focused instruction, but also reading and writing, teacher-led and student-led activities, and whole-group, small-group, and independent configurations.

However, the definition and practice of balanced literacy has since proliferated, to the point where it is often unique to each teacher. But for most balanced literacy educators, it means teaching reading in a way that meets student's needs while also promoting a love of reading. Since its conception, balanced literacy has become the most commonly taught approach in American schools: 72% of teachers report that balanced literacy is the instructional method they use most often in their classrooms.

With its flexible definition and approach, balanced literacy was appealing. Even better, it worked for some students. But without a universally standard implementation, its success remains inconsistent. And because all iterations of balanced literacy lack the structured explicit instruction and content needed for students with learning disabilities like dyslexia, it will never work for all students.
Experts Continue to Study Reading Skills
For more than five decades, educators and researchers have continued to add to the growing body of research known as the science of reading. Studies from education, literacy, developmental psychology, educational psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience fields continue to provide evidence about how the brain learns to read, and what is needed to effectively teach reading.

What has evolved is more than just phonics instruction. In 2000, a National Reading Panel determined that effective reading instruction requires five key concepts: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

More recently, the International Dyslexia Association® coined the term "Structured Literacy" as a comprehensive approach that teaches the structure of language (phonology, orthography, syntax, morphology, semantics, discourse) in an explicit, systematic, cumulative, and diagnostic way. Structured Literacy covers the five key concepts identified by the National Reading Panel, and adds word recognition, and written expression, as well as expanding comprehension to include both listening and reading comprehension. Structured Literacy is proven to be effective for all students, but more importantly, essential for students with dyslexia.

While much of this research accumulated quietly, in recent years the science of reading has made headlines in a concerted effort to turn the tide against low reading scores.
Looking Ahead
In the year 2022, when most teachers in America report using balanced literacy, the majority of children still struggle to read proficiently. This problem is fixable, but improving literacy proficiency will require challenging the status quo of literacy instruction and transitioning toward an evidence-backed approach that is proven to help every student learn to read.

Before students can truly develop a love of reading, and before they can read to learn, they first must learn to read. Explicit literacy instruction rooted in the science of reading, the decades of cognitive and neurological research into how reading is processed in the brain, is proven to close equity gaps and achieve the goal of literacy for all. Transitioning to science of reading-based instruction, whether a Structured Literacy approach or otherwise, will improve students' reading levels, help students reading below grade level catch up to their peers, and help us achieve a more just and equitable world in which every student can enjoy reading.
Join us for Part Two of this series, where we dive into the science of reading and how the human brain learns to read.

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The Science of Reading vs. Balanced Literacy: The History of the Reading Wars | Lexia

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For decades, educators and policymakers have debated the best way to teach students how to read, from phonics to whole language, from balanced literacy to the science of reading. Check out this blog to learn how literacy education evolved to what it is today.

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This is a great video that explains instructional techniques on how to teach new words by showing how to divide them into syllables and discussing what kind of syllables each one has. It can be done with the whole class.

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Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Server

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Building Bridges - Equity Through Rigorous Texts for All Students

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This 10-episode podcast, "Sold a Story," discussed the sad reality of students' inability to read and the frustrations they and their parents endured. Sixty years ago, Marie Clay developed the Reading Recovery program, which was published and adopted by numerous school districts across the United States. President George W. Bush prioritized reading instruction and encouraged Congress to budget money for schools that used reading programs supported by scientific research, but this incentive was blocked by influential and money-hungry publishing companies like Heinemann that viewed this as a threat. Other millionaires who endorsed false ideas of reading instruction were Lucy Calkins and Fountas and Pinnell. Lucy Calkins has since learned from the science of reading and has revised her materials.

Now, school districts are changing their outdated textbooks across the country and banning ineffective teaching methods. Many teachers, students, and parents discussed their frustration with the false teaching methods and are promoting the science of reading.

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Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation - even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It's an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn't true and are now reckoning with the consequences - children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.

Sixty years ago, Marie Clay developed a way to teach reading she said would help kids who were falling behind. They'd catch up and never need help again. Today, her program remains popular and her theory about how people read is at the root of a lot of reading instruction in schools. But Marie Clay was wrong.
Sold a Story is an independent investigative journalism project from American Public Media. We rely on your donations to support this kind of rigorous reporting.
The controversial educational publishing company has sold instructional materials and professional resources in almost every state, earning at least $1.6 billion over a decade. Explore a map of school districts.

More states are now requiring districts to adopt curriculum that adheres to the science of reading. Look up the policy in your state.

At least 15 states have passed laws about how schools teach reading since the Sold a Story podcast was released in 2022, but there is pushback.

Here's a reading list put together by Emily Hanford.

This discussion guide, created by a teacher, invites educators, parents, community members and kids to have a conversation about the podcast.

Emails and voice messages poured in from people who listened to Sold a Story.

We'll let you know when we release new episodes of the podcast. Enter your address below.

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Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

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There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation - even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read.

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Scientific research has shown how children learn to read and how they should be taught. But many educators don’t know the science and, in some cases, actively resist it. As a result, millions of kids are being set up to fail.

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This article reported on the dismal statistics of our nation's reading scores. More than 60% of American 4th graders are not proficient readers. One of the excuses for this is the high poverty rate in our nation. There is an assumption that reading is a natural process, like learning to talk. It was found that kids must be explicitly taught how to connect sounds with letters.

Jack Silva from the Bethlehem school district discovered that elementary school teachers were not using phonics skills to learn to read new words.

The article discussed the "reading wars" of whole language and phonics instruction. After the National Reading Panel report, whole language enthusiasts repackaged their approach as balanced literacy, which still did not support what we have learned in science. After much research, the Bethlehem school district changed its motto to "When we know better, we do better." Since 2015, their reading scores have increased dramatically.

The Science of Reading still has not infiltrated all of our higher-level institutions. Faculty have ignored the scientific research that informs reading acquisition. Progress is slowly being made to teach teachers the correct way to teach reading.

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It is February 2015, and I am at a national conference listening to a panel present the results of their research on improving reading comprehension. Several members of the panel, like myself and a few others in the room, are funded by the Institute of Education Sciences as part of the Reading for Understanding Initiative. This $120 million program supported six interconnected research teams in their efforts to improve reading achievement in the United States. ¹ Educators and policymakers had for some time been concerned about the performance of American children on tests of reading achievement. Over the last 20 years, only about a third of students have scored at the proficient level on the reading subtest of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). ² This assessment is administered biennially to a representative sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students (and every four years to 12th-graders) from across the nation. Somewhat better, though still troubling, levels of performance have also been reported on state-based reading tests, administered annually starting in third grade. The Reading for Understanding Initiative was intended to jump-start instruction in reading comprehension and significantly improve reading achievement on state and national assessments. In fact, it was described by program officials as the "moonshot" for reading comprehension.

Unfortunately, the preliminary results that the panel presented fell short of these expectations. The reported studies found that students receiving a variety of comprehension interventions made gains, compared with control groups, on assessments closely tied to the interventions-but they showed limited or no significant gains on standardized measures of reading comprehension. Needless to say, conference attendees were surprised and discouraged by these results.

Sitting in the back of the room, I clearly remember not being particularly alarmed by what the panel reported. As part of my work on the Reading for Understanding Initiative and earlier related projects, I had spent many hours thinking, studying, and talking with teachers and colleagues about reading comprehension. Through these efforts, I had come to recognize that the field's general approach to reading comprehension was shortsighted. We were treating reading comprehension as if it were a single construct that could be measured with one or more general reading tests and improved with a short-term intervention. At a deeper conceptual level, most researchers (including those funded by the Reading for Understanding Initiative) recognized that reading comprehension was multidimensional, but it had been common practice in education and research for some time to study, assess, and provide instruction as if comprehension were a skill, rather like swimming. If we teach someone to swim, they can soon transfer that skill to any body of water, whether it be a pool, lake, or ocean. But reading comprehension is not a skill someone learns and can then apply in different reading contexts. It is one of the most complex activities that we engage in on a regular basis, and our ability to comprehend is dependent upon a wide range of knowledge and skills.

The Comprehension as Skill Myth

How have we come to think of comprehension as a skill? I believe a major reason this has occurred is because we have talked and written about comprehension in the context of related skill-like abilities. Discussions about reading often include the topics of phonics, fluency, and related skills, such as phonemic awareness, together with comprehension. As an example, take the work of the National Reading Panel. ³ This panel of reading experts was convened by Congress to assess the effectiveness of different approaches to teaching reading. They examined a wide range of instructional approaches related to comprehension, but in overviews of their work, comprehension has been reduced to one of the "Big Five," along with phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and vocabulary. As such, it is depicted alongside these skills as one of the "pillars" of reading. In another common graphic, the word comprehension is displayed within a box similar in design (actually smaller) to boxes for other skill-like components of reading. Whereas such a consideration and depiction are thought to form a useful heuristic, it can give the false impression that comprehension is comparable to these skills in terms of its complexity and the way it is best taught and measured.

Furthermore, widely used approaches to teaching reading comprehension reinforce this view. ⁴ Comprehension has typically been taught through the use of strategies such as "find the main idea," "make a prediction," or "monitor your comprehension." These strategies are taught and practiced in order to gain automaticity, much like what is done with other skill-like behaviors. This, in turn, can lead us to believe that comprehension can be thought of in a similar manner to these other skills.

A More Accurate and Complex Model

Despite this common view about comprehension, several lines of enquiry have recognized the true complexity of reading comprehension for some time. Nearly 20 years ago, this complexity was captured by the RAND Reading Study Group. ⁵ This federally funded group was charged with developing a research agenda to address pressing issues in literacy. As part of their 2002 report, they conceptualized reading comprehension as a combination of factors within three different categories: the reader, the text, and the activity of reading.

The reader brings a set of cognitive abilities (such as attention, memory, and reasoning), language knowledge and skills, motivations and interests, and background knowledge to the task of reading. Readers vary considerably in these factors, and this variability impacts their comprehension. Considerable research attention has been focused on reader variables, and their impact on comprehension is well documented.

The text includes such elements as genre, topic, and complexity. Students encounter texts with different genres-such as narrative, descriptive, expository, or persuasive-and these texts vary in their subject matter and level of complexity. Although not emphasized in the RAND report from 2002, texts also now vary in their form. They may be in a paper or digital form, and the latter can be displayed on a variety of devices, such as a phone, tablet, or computer. Each of these forms imposes its own set of constraints and challenges on comprehension. The notion of multiple texts can also be added to this category to account for the fact that skilled readers often rely on more than one text for comprehension.

The activity refers to the task or purpose of reading. It is often argued that the purpose of reading is comprehension. But we actually seek to comprehend for a specific reason, be it to prepare for a test, evaluate the strengths of an argument, learn the rules of a game, or enjoy a magazine article or book. Each purpose brings unique knowledge and skills that must be acquired to be successful.

Importantly, the RAND Reading Study Group viewed these various elements interacting within a sociocultural context that involves factors such as where the reading occurs (e.g., school or home), how much support there is (e.g., individual, teacher- or caregiver-led, or group activity), and what cultural value is placed on reading by students' families, peers, racial and ethnic groups, and other groups that are central to the students' identities.

Taken together, it is easy to see how any one individual may have multiple levels of comprehension ability depending upon what they are reading and why they are reading it. As a result, comprehension cannot be reduced to a single notion because it is not a single ability.

The Role of Knowledge

Chief among the factors influencing reading comprehension is background knowledge. Research clearly shows that how much readers understand about the text's topic before they read it is a major factor in how much they understand while and after they read it. ⁶ Unfortunately, much of the efforts directed toward improving reading comprehension have neglected building background knowledge. (As discussed later, there are widely used strategies for "activating" background knowledge, but they do not necessarily develop new knowledge.) It was this neglect that first alerted me to the problems with the way we were thinking about reading comprehension.

In my graduate training, many years ago, I was introduced to the role of knowledge in reading comprehension. At that time, schema theory was a popular topic in research on human cognition and learning. A schema is an organized unit of knowledge that forms the foundation for many activities involving human thought. Richard Anderson, a professor of educational psychology, brought the notion of a schema to education and argued for its critical role in reading comprehension as well as learning in general. ⁷ He was among the first to convey to me the importance of teaching knowledge to improve comprehension.

In my psychology classes, I was introduced to a study that continues to be one of my favorites. The following passage, which was designed to be ambiguous, was read aloud to college students, and they were asked to recall as much as they could.

The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one never can tell. After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life. ⁸

Students given the topic of the passage beforehand quickly made sense of what they heard and recalled many details. (Those students were told, "The paragraph you will hear will be about washing clothes.") But those who heard the same passage without the topic were confused and recalled little. Of particular interest, a third group of students was given the topic after they heard the passage, but they too were confused and recalled little. Of course, it was not simply the topic but rather the knowledge associated with it that allowed the students to make sense of what they had heard-but only if this knowledge was available from the start.

It was studies like this, including similar ones involving reading rather than listening, that early on clearly demonstrated for me the importance of knowledge for comprehension. But somewhere along the line, educators and researchers-myself included-got distracted and failed to pay attention to its importance. It is not exactly clear how this happened. Perhaps it was a shift in focus to bottom-up models of reading that argued that meaning was contained within the text and that the reader's job was to extract it. Or maybe it was just that knowledge took too much time to teach, and it made more sense to focus on skills that could be taught quickly and applied across topics. Also, considering comprehension alongside skill-like aspects of reading probably distracted us from the role of knowledge.

But whatever the reason, knowledge has come back to the forefront in discussions of reading comprehension. Proponents such as E. D. Hirsch Jr., Daniel T. Willingham, and Natalie Wexler have written extensively about the role of knowledge in comprehension.* Their work and that of others ⁹ has begun to have an influence on research in reading comprehension, but change has been slow. Some of the projects in the Reading for Understanding Initiative did have knowledge as a central component, but the other projects paid only limited attention to knowledge in instruction and/or assessment. Limited attention also plagued other large-scale projects, such as those within the Striving Readers program. This program funded by the US Department of Education involved a set of 17 studies designed to improve reading comprehension in middle and high school students. ¹⁰ While materials did address different topics, there was no direct effort to build knowledge as part of the intervention or assessment. Again, it is not surprising that these studies only demonstrated small effects at best on improving reading comprehension.

What Knowledge Does for Comprehension

Why is knowledge so critical for comprehension? To begin with, it provides a framework for organizing incoming information and guides us as we read through a text. We better understand what the topic is and have expectations about where a passage may be going. By doing so, knowledge keeps us on track and prevents us from going down "blind alleys" in our understanding. This framework also gives us a place to anchor new information in memory and associate it with past knowledge. We use these building blocks of the new and the old to construct an initial understanding of what we are reading and then continuously revise and add to it as we move through a text. It is this integration of the new information in the text with what we already know that brings meaning to what we read.

Background knowledge also allows us to make inferences and fill in information that is not explicitly provided. Authors rarely tell us all we need to know in order to understand a text, so we need to fill in some of the details with our background knowledge. Knowledge also enables us to more easily recognize which of the multiple meanings of a word is appropriate for the context. For example, when reading a passage about baseball, knowing that the word pitcher refers to a person rather than an object could be critical for comprehension.

Knowledge is also essential for thinking. But in certain contexts these days, it is seen as secondary to thinking. Critical thinking has become the rage in education. All too often, teachers are urged to engage students in thinking deeply and critically about what they read as if these skills were independent of the topic; meanwhile, background knowledge is downplayed as if the specific information about a topic could be looked up on the internet when necessary. ¹¹ But it is the specific information that gives students something to think critically about-and our minds are surprisingly limited in how much new information they can take in at one time. Knowledge must accumulate over time to ensure a level of depth that allows for a critical analysis of the subject matter. We can't think logically about different approaches to government without knowing a lot about different forms of government. So, in this sense, knowledge is the most critical component of critical thinking.

Knowledge also allows us to make the most use of our working memory, where much of thinking takes place. There are limitations on how much information we can hold and think about simultaneously in working memory, and this amount is heavily influenced by knowledge. Knowledge coming from long-term memory places a much smaller burden on working memory than new knowledge coming from a text (or a speaker); it also leaves us with more capacity in working memory to think about things in novel ways. As a simple example, it is easier to remember the letter sequences USA, FBI, and NBC than PDQ, RJB, and FVO. When reading, the more information related to the topic we already have stored in long-term memory, the more deeply we can think about that topic-even as we read a passage that offers new information.

Finally, the relationship between knowledge and reading comprehension is reciprocal in nature. Not only does knowledge improve comprehension, but comprehension allows the reader to build new knowledge. Creating a coherent understanding of what one reads modifies the background knowledge that is available for subsequent reading comprehension either later in the same text or in future reading of related texts. ¹²

Implications for Instruction

It should be evident from my comments that improving reading comprehension is a complex process that requires multiple levels of instruction and practice. Clearly, building background knowledge that is both deep and broad is needed to lay the foundation for comprehension and for further knowledge acquisition. However, students also need high-quality reading instruction involving decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies in order to best use their knowledge in different reading contexts and for different purposes.

For many years, the primary way knowledge has been addressed in the context of reading has been through activating background knowledge using strategies like prereading discussions, concept maps, and anticipation guides. These strategies can be effective-but they only work when the appropriate knowledge is available. Often, children will not have the requisite knowledge, or their knowledge will be impoverished or inaccurate. If inaccurate, this activation can actually be detrimental to comprehension.

Whereas knowledge activation has been widely viewed as a component of reading instruction, building knowledge often has not. In fact, instruction devoted to content knowledge has actually been replaced by other aspects of reading instruction. In most elementary schools, social studies and science instruction has been supplanted by English language arts (ELA) instruction. Surveys have shown that, on average, children in grades 1-4 receive only 2.3 hours of science instruction per week, whereas four times that amount is spent on ELA instruction teaching word-reading skills, comprehension strategies, and vocabulary. ¹³ The thinking has been that if we want children to improve their reading comprehension, we have to work on reading skills to achieve fluency before we can use reading to build knowledge. However, this false dichotomy between learning to read and reading to learn has not led to better reading achievement.

Recently, educators have begun to rethink reading instruction and consider how to better integrate knowledge acquisition with literacy in ELA instruction. ¹⁴ In these more integrated approaches, students build knowledge at the same time they are learning reading-related skills. This involves a concentrated effort to build rich and connected ideas about social studies, science, and other subjects during ELA lessons. Such instruction does not necessarily replace the science and social studies instruction that may be taking place at other times but rather supplements it. As with other content instruction, reading materials in an integrated ELA program are selected to build knowledge. Instead of reading, for example, about volcanoes one day and Rosa Parks the next, which has often been the case in ELA instruction, reading materials are arranged by topic in a logical and sequential manner and form an integrated, content-rich curriculum. In this way, knowledge is acquired and accumulated over time.

Such content-rich, connected instruction can be especially engaging and can draw children's interests to literacy and learning. Student engagement and learning can be further fostered by culturally responsive instruction. One example is a program called Readiness through Integrative Science and Engineering. ¹⁵ This program takes a home-to-school approach to connect new knowledge with culturally relevant knowledge concerning the people, places, and objects that students interact with on a daily basis. By understanding, appreciating, and connecting with this knowledge, learning can be especially enhanced for all children.

In an integrated literacy and knowledge-building curriculum, there should be a strong focus on teaching fundamental reading skills. Depending on the grade and specific skills taught, instruction in decoding, spelling, and fluency could comprise its own unit or be blended with discussion and activities designed to acquire and build content-area knowledge. Vocabulary, an important focus of ELA instruction, can be taught especially well within a content-rich, integrated curriculum. Novel words related to the content are excellent targets for instruction. These words are often repeated multiple times in a text, and their meanings are well supported by the context in which they occur. In addition, once learned, they become part of the knowledge base of the topic. General-purpose academic words, or what are sometimes referred to as Tier 2 words, also are learned more easily in a rich context. When these words are supported by content knowledge, the reader can use this knowledge to more easily infer their meaning. Also, a rich context can prove particularly helpful in learning words with multiple meanings, such as "bright" or "palm." ¹⁶

Content-rich materials are also excellent contexts in which to learn more about academic language. Written language is characterized by more complex grammar than spoken language, and students can benefit from explicit instruction in how this grammar works. Specifically, science texts tend to privilege nouns for compacting information, developing logical reasoning, and achieving precision. ¹⁷ For example, consider this text: "Asthma is a disorder in which the respiratory passages narrow significantly as a result of an allergen. This narrowing...." Here the author creates an abstract noun (i.e., "this narrowing") to represent the entire previous clause. Recognizing the referent of this abstract noun is critical to comprehension and, in cases like this, could benefit from explicit instruction. In other academic texts, students will be confronted with complex and elaborated noun phrases, rather than reduced ones, as well as challenging noun, adverbial, and adjectival clauses. For example, social studies texts use "noun clauses (e.g., 'Jefferson's next argument was that King George III had violated the colonists' rights by passing unfair laws and interfering with colonial governments'), adverbial clauses (e.g., 'Even before Washington reached Boston, the Patriots took action'), and adjectival clauses (e.g., 'He was influenced by the Enlightenment idea of the social contract, which states that governments and rulers must protect the rights of citizens') to pack a large amount of information." ¹⁸ Given this complexity, explicit instruction in how to unpack academic grammar could prove helpful to students in understanding informational texts.

Integrated approaches also can incorporate many of the same comprehension strategies employed in traditional ELA instruction. Some of these strategies, like inferencing and paraphrasing, are rather general and can be explicitly taught and used across various contexts. However, within an integrated approach, some strategies are best selected and taught based on their relevance to what is being read and for what purpose. The nature of texts and purposes for reading vary across subject matters, and thus, the strategies that may be most advantageous will vary as well.

Some of these strategies will be the common ones (e.g., mental imagery) identified by the National Reading Panel. Others will be more text- and task-specific metacognitive approaches to assist comprehension. For example, during a social studies lesson, students may be presented with an explanation or argument and asked to evaluate its validity. In such a case, students would benefit from explicit instruction and practice on how to identify a claim and judge the relevance, sufficiency, and accuracy of the evidence provided. Alternatively, science texts often provide a description of some object, animal, or process, and students are often tested on what they have learned from their reading. For such a task, students may benefit from being taught how to use a graphic organizer to summarize and categorize the information within different organizational structures. Students will also benefit from recognizing that a science text (from a trustworthy source) is an authoritative account and is different from texts in which the author's perspective is central, such as a poem or a historical figure's diary entry. This more nuanced approach to strategies becomes ever more important as students move through the grades and the comprehension skills needed are increasingly determined by the characteristics of the text and the activities carried out within the different disciplines. Nevertheless, knowledge of how disciplinary texts work, or what is called disciplinary literacy, can and should be part of instruction in the elementary grades. ¹⁹

There are now quite a few integrated, content-rich curricula being used across the country. Some of these programs are commercially available through curriculum publishers, such as Core Knowledge Language Arts and Wit & Wisdom, whereas others have been developed by researchers, such as Model of Reading Engagement. ²⁰ Some of these programs have been developed specifically to be used as part of ELA instruction. Others are truly integrated across the curriculum and operate instead of or in addition to ELA materials. There is also quite a bit of variability in the scope of literacy instruction within these programs. Nevertheless, a recent meta-analysis showed that when compared with traditional programs in which literacy and content instruction were provided separately, integrated, content-rich programs resulted in students scoring significantly better on vocabulary and comprehension (including on standardized measures of comprehension). Not surprisingly, significant gains were also made in the content taught. ²¹

Implications for Assessment

The multidimensional nature of reading comprehension presents a significant challenge for assessment. Because of the numerous factors in play, a reader's comprehension ability is more fluid than often thought. In other words, any one individual will have different levels of ability depending on what is read and for what purpose.

Perhaps the best demonstration of this variability and its impact on assessment comes from a study that included scores from 995 children who were administered four different standardized measures of reading comprehension. ²² The researchers found that the median correlation between the different tests was only .54, which was surprisingly low given that the tests purported to measure the same thing. In another analysis of the data, they identified children scoring in the lowest 10th percentile on each of the measures and compared the overlap of these groups across measures. Their results showed that, on average, only 43 percent of the children identified by one test as poor readers were also identified as poor readers on another test. In other words, the odds of any two tests diagnosing the same student as having a comprehension deficit were less than half. Further analyses showed that it was not just a problem of consistency at the lower end of the scale; there was just as much inconsistency in identifying children performing in the highest 10th percentile.

The inconsistency in the results of the different measures of reading comprehension was likely due in part to the poor reliability of these measures, something that is not uncommon for diagnostic measures of reading comprehension. On the other hand, the measures also differed in their formats, so that could have contributed to the variability. One measure employed a cloze task in which children read passages and filled in missing words. In the others, children read either passages or single sentences and then answered open-ended or multiple-choice questions. These formats are known to place different demands on reading-related processes, such as word reading, language ability, and working memory. ²³ Thus, children with different strengths and weaknesses in these processes would be expected to perform differently on the measures.

The content of the passages/sentences may also have added to the variability of the measures. That is, children were likely to have varied in their knowledge about the topics covered, and that could have influenced their performance. Such variability may be present not only across tests but also across passages within a test. For example, in the Reading for Understanding project that my colleagues and I carried out, students read four different passages from an informal reading inventory and answered open-ended questions. We observed considerable variability within students from one passage to another. It was not uncommon for a student to get nearly all the questions correct on one passage and most wrong on another. Whereas there may be several reasons for this variability, differences in background knowledge is a likely contributor.

Because of the variability due to passages, state- and national-level tests of reading use numerous passages that cover multiple topics. But, of course, this introduces the problem of these tests favoring students who have more knowledge about a broad range of topics than those with less knowledge. This has led E. D. Hirsch Jr. to argue that reading tests are actually knowledge tests in disguise. ²⁴

The fact that state and national reading tests are knowledge heavy introduces a further problem: performance on these tests will likely be more difficult to change in the short term, since knowledge acquisition is incremental in nature. Indeed, as I stated at the outset, American children's performance on NAEP has remained virtually unchanged for some time. This has been in spite of significant federal, state, and local efforts. For example, in North Carolina, the percentage of students failing to reach proficiency on state reading tests has remained largely unchanged, hovering above 50 percent, since 2013-14, when the state passed its K-3 Read to Achieve literacy act. ²⁵

Maybe the problem is not only the instructional practices teachers have been encouraged to use but also the way we are assessing comprehension. An alternative approach would be to teach children using an integrated literacy and content-rich curriculum and to test their ability to read and comprehend passages covered in that curriculum. In other words, offer a better match between instruction and assessment. Don't just test the skills and strategies that have been taught; test the specific content-area topics that have been taught. Such an approach would be fairer and more equitable for all involved. Teachers would have a clear idea of what content within which to imbed their literacy instruction. Students would have the opportunity to learn from content-rich curricula and be assessed based on what they learned in school (instead of what they may or may not have learned at home, over the summer, etc.). Also, because instruction would be better matched with assessment, there would be a greater opportunity for schools and districts to evaluate the progress they are making.

One approach that has attempted to better match instruction with assessment is being carried out within the guidelines of the Every Student Succeeds Act assessment pilot program. ²⁶ This program encourages local involvement in the development of the next generation of assessments. It allows states, with approval by the US Department of Education, to pilot new and innovative assessments in lieu of current state exams. Initially, this takes place in a small number of districts before moving on to statewide implementation. As of October 2021, five states have received approval to develop these assessments. Most notable, Louisiana has begun a multiyear process to offer a humanities assessment as an alternative to its English language arts and social studies assessments. ²⁷ The new humanities assessment draws from texts and topics that are included in the state's recommended curriculum. ²⁸ Thus, the content of the test is likely to be well matched with the instruction students receive.

A very limited pilot of this new assessment, LEAP 2025 Humanities, began in the 2018-19 school year, and then implementation was interrupted by the pandemic, ²⁹ so it will likely be several more years before researchers can evaluate the impact of this new approach. Of course, designing an assessment that is in keeping with current research on literacy development is just the first step. The extent to which the assessment will help enhance instructional practices depends on many related components, including meaningful professional development on how to use the results to inform teaching; time (appropriately allocated and compensated) for teachers to learn collaboratively as they adjust to the new assessment; genuine opportunities for all teachers to have a voice in providing feedback on the curriculum and assessment; and lower stakes tied to the assessment results such that teachers are not afraid to be innovative. In fact, one of the findings of the Reading for Understanding Initiative was that "a major roadblock to teacher uptake of new practices is the accountability infrastructure of reform movements. The more test scores matter, the less the likelihood that teachers will adopt novel teaching practices." ³⁰

Still, I am especially encouraged by Louisiana's efforts and am hopeful that other states and districts will also consider how to better align what is tested with what is taught. It is these types of programs, combined with integrated literacy and content-rich curricula, that I believe can better address comprehension. These programs move beyond characterizing comprehension as simply one of the "Big Five" and recognize its complexity and what it will take to help all children understand and learn from what they read. I look forward to attending future conferences where the results of these programs are presented.
Hugh W. Catts is a professor in the Florida State University School of Communication Science and Disorders and is affiliated with the Florida Center for Reading Research. The author of dozens of peer-reviewed articles and editor of several books, Catts has been engaged in research on language and literacy development for over four decades. Much of his work focuses on early identification and prevention of language-based reading disabilities and on reading comprehension assessment and intervention.
*For articles by Hirsch, Willingham, and Wexler on the importance of building knowledge, see the "Reading" section of American Educator's subject index. ( return to article)

Endnotes

1. P. Pearson et al., eds., Reaping the Rewards of the Reading for Understanding Initiative (Washington, DC: National Academy of Education, 2020), naeducation.org/reaping-the-rewards-of-reading-for-understanding-initiative.
2. National Assessment of Educational Progress, "National Achievement-Level Results," Grade 4, Nation's Report Card, 2019, nationsreportcard.gov/reading/nation/achievement/?grade=4.
3. National Reading Panel, Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction (Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Child and Human Development, 2000).
4. D. T. Willingham and G. Lovette, "Can Reading Comprehension Be Taught," Teachers College Record (September 2014).
5. C. Snow, Reading for Understanding: Toward an R&D Program in Reading Comprehension (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2002).
6. G. N. Cervetti and T. S. Wright, "The Role of Knowledge in Understanding and Learning from Text," in Handbook of Reading Research, ed. E. B. Moje et al. (Taylor and Francis Group, 2020).
7. R. Anderson, "Schema-Directed Processes in Language Comprehension," in Cognitive Psychology and Instruction, ed. A. Lesgold et al. (New York: Plenum, 1978).
8. J. Bransford and M. Johnson, "Contextual Prerequisites for Understanding: Some Investigation of Comprehension and Recall," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 11 (1972): 722.
9. For a review written by one of these pioneers, who in turn describes several others, see S. Neuman, "The Role of Knowledge in Early Literacy," Reading Research Quarterly 36, no. 4 (November 2011): 468-75.
10. B. Boulay et al., Summary of Research Generated by Striving Readers on the Effectiveness of Interventions for Struggling Adolescent Readers, NCEE-2016-4001 (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, October 2015).
11. For a paper that addresses many of the widespread misconceptions about critical thinking, see D. T. Willingham, "How to Teach Critical Thinking," commissioned paper, Education: Future Frontiers (May 2019).
12. Pearson et al., Reaping the Rewards.
13. R. K. Blank, "What Is the Impact of Decline in Science Instructional Time in Elementary School?: Time for Elementary Instruction Has Declined, and Less Time for Science Is Correlated with Lower Scores on NAEP," prepared for the Noyce Foundation, 2012.
14. See, for example, the Knowledge Matters Campaign, knowledgematterscampaign.org, and Curriculum Matters, curriculummatters.org.
15. C. McWayne et al., "Incorporating Knowledge from Children's Homes and Communities," Young Children 75, no. 5 (December 2020): 20-26.
16. J. Gustafson, "Robust Vocabulary Instruction: Bringing Knowledge-Rich Curricula to Life," Achieve the Core, September 30, 2019.
17. Z. Fang, "Scientific Literacy: A Systematic Functional Linguistics Perspective," Science Education 89, no. 2 (March 2005): 335-47.
18. Y. Zhang, "Supporting English Language Learners in Social Studies: Language-Focused Strategies," Social Studies 108 (2017): 2.
19. C. Shanahan and T. Shanahan, "Does Disciplinary Literacy Have a Place in Elementary School?," The Reading Teacher 67, no. 8 (2014): 636-39.
20. J. Kim et al., "Improving Reading Comprehension, Science Domain Knowledge, and Reading Engagement Through a First-Grade Content Literacy Intervention," Journal of Educational Psychology 113, no. 1 (2021): 3-26.
21. H. Hwang, S. Cabell, and R. Joyner, "Does Cultivating Content Knowledge During Literacy Instruction Support Vocabulary and Comprehension in the Elementary School Years?: A Systematic Review," Reading Psychology, manuscript under review.
22. J. Keenan and C. Meenan, "Test Differences in Diagnosing Reading Comprehension Deficits," Journal of Learning Disabilities 47, no. 2 (2014): 125-35.
23. J. Keenan, R. Betjemann, and R. Olson, "Reading Comprehension Tests Vary in the Skills They Assess: Differential Dependence on Decoding and Oral Language," Scientific Studies in Reading 12, no. 3 (2008): 281-300.
24. E. D. Hirsch Jr., Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children from Failed Educational Theories (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2016).
25. S. Koon, B. Foorman, and T. Galloway, "Identifying North Carolina Students at Risk of Scoring Below Proficient in Reading at the End of Grade 3," REL 2020-030 (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, August 2020).
26. Every Student Succeeds Act, Pub. L. No. 114-95 (2015).
27. For the state's documents on the assessment, see "LEAP 2025 Humanities," Assessments, Louisiana Department of Education, louisianabelieves.com/resources/library/assessment.
28. Louisiana Believes, "Louisiana's Innovative Assessment Pilot National Update," Louisiana Department of Education, August 15, 2019.
29. Louisiana Believes, "Parent Guide to the LEAP 2025 Humanities Student Reports," Louisiana Department of Education, louisianabelieves.com/docs/default-source/assessment/parent-guide-to-leap-2025-humanities.pdf; and N. Munyan-Penney and C. Barone, "Innovative Assessment Pilot: Louisiana's LEAP 2025 Humanities Assessment," Education Reform Now, November 2020, edreformnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Louisiana-IADA-LEAP-2025-Humanities.pdf.
30. Pearson et al., Reaping the Rewards, 5.

[Illustrations by Jessie Lin]

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Rethinking How to Promote Reading Comprehension

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It is February 2015, and I am at a national conference listening to a panel present the results of their research on improving reading comprehension. Several members of the panel, like myself and a few others in the room, are funded by the Institute of Education Sciences as part of the Reading for Understanding Initiative.

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This article discussed the content of SL instruction. It consists of phoneme awareness, Sound-symbol (phoneme-grapheme) correspondences, patterns, and conventions of print (orthography), morphology (the smallest unit of meaning in a language, syntax, semantics:

The article also noted the principles and methods of SL instruction. These include being explicit, hands-on, and engaging, and being diagnostic and responsive to adjust teacher instruction and pace.

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Examples of what I learned when downloading Chapter 1

Review of skills to use;

a. Review homework and relevant previous learning.

b. Review prerequisite skills and knowledge.

2. Presentation a. State lesson goals. b. Present new material in small steps. c. Model procedures. d. Provide examples and non-examples. e. Use clear language. f. Avoid digressions.

3. Guided practice a. Require a high frequency of responses. b. Ensure high rates of success. c. Provide timely feedback, clues, and prompts. d. Have students continue to practice until they are fluent.

4. Corrections and feedback: a. Reteach when necessary.

5. Independent practice a. Monitor initial practice attempts. b. Have students continue practicing until skills are automatic.

6. Weekly and monthly reviews

Example of what to do when scaffolding:

They take a complex skill (e.g., a multistep strategy) and teach it in manageable and logical pieces or chunks.

2. Sequence skills so that they build on each other.

3. Select examples and problems that progress in complexity.

4. Provide demonstrations and completed models of problems.

5. Provide hints and prompts as students practice a new skill.

6. Provide aids such as cue cards and checklists to help students remember the steps and processes used to complete tasks and solve problems.

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Effective and Efficient Teaching

By Anita L. Archer and Charles A. Hughes

Explicit instruction is systematic, direct, engaging, and success oriented-and has been shown to promote achievement for all students. This highly practical and accessible resource gives special and general education teachers the tools to implement explicit instruction in any grade level or content area. The authors are leading experts who provide clear guidelines for identifying key concepts, strategies, skills, and routines to teach; designing and delivering effective lessons; and giving students opportunities to practice and master new material. Sample lesson plans, lively examples, and reproducible checklists and teacher worksheets enhance the utility of the volume.

This title is part of the What Works for Special-Needs Learners Series, edited by Karen R. Harris and Steve Graham.

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Explicit Instructions | Effective and Efficient Teaching

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By Anita L. Archer and Charles A. Hughes Explicit instruction is systematic, direct, engaging, and success oriented-and has been shown to promote achievement for all students. This highly practical and accessible resource gives special and general education teachers the tools to implement explicit instruction in any grade level or content area.

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I loved this video because it illustrated a correct teaching method for reading instruction in the second grade.

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This video was produced in partnership with the National Education Association.
See transcript ›
Transcript

Reading Fluency with Chloe, Second Grader
Linda Farrell: That word is "flood-ing." Say "flooding." Chloe: Flooding. Linda Farrell: Flooding. That means a whole bunch of water goes some place. Chloe: And it's flooding the whole, entire ... Linda Farrell: Yeah. It's that word.
[Graphics] Looking at Reading Interventions: A Reading Rockets Series

[Graphics] One-on-One Intervention with Chloe.
Chloe is in the second grade in Alexandria, Virginia. During the pandemic, she's also getting Linda Farrell: Okay. Hi, Ms. Smoak and Chloe. How was your holiday? Chloe: It was completely great. Olu Smoak: It was wonderful. How are you? Linda Farrell: I am well. Ms. Farrell and Chloe are working mostly on phonics. But they devote the last ten minutes of each lesson to oral reading. That gives Chloe a chance to apply what she's learned about phonics and develop her reading fluency, which is our focus today. virtual And they probably should be approached with struggling readers in that way. If someone is struggling with fluency, first, we want to have them accurate. Next, we get them reading at a reasonable rate, and if they aren't reading with expression at that point then we work on their expression. lessons from reading expert Linda Farrell. Linda Farrell: Today, Chloe, we're going to read some sections of passages. We're going to aim for accuracy. What's accuracy? Chloe: Accuracy is when you don't do any, like any words, every word is correct. Linda Farrell: Yes. That would be 100 percent accuracy. Olu Smoak: Okay, I'll leave you two to the lesson. See you afterwards. Have a great time.
[Graphics] Linda Farrell, M.Ed. Founding Partner, Readsters
Linda Farrell: Okay, Chloe, let's get started. Chloe: When the twins finished eating their apples it was time to get to work. Kim picked red apples. Jill got green apples. The green apples were not sweet.
Linda Farrell: Fluency is often measured as a rate. People think that fluency is how fast you read and actually fluency has three elements: accuracy, its rate, and its expression.
Ms. Farrell starts Chloe with a short passage - about 40 words or so. It's one that Chloe can probably read accurately on her first try ... to give her confidence and to get her warmed up. Ms. Farrell won't be timing Chloe, so the focus is on reading each word correctly. So why is accuracy so critical?
[Graphics] Three Elements of Fluency: Accuracy. Rate. Expression.
Ms. Farrell says that it's a mistake to allow young readers to guess words or to skip words. We shouldn't even let close misreads slide - like reading "mommy" instead of "mom" or adding a word that isn't there. If we allow students to get comfortable with inaccuracy, they can develop habits that are really hard to change later on. Linda Farrell: You got 100 percent three times in a row, so we're going to read Set Two next time. Chloe's goal is to read three passages correctly the first time she reads them - cold reads. After that, she'll practice reading more difficult passages until she's reading 100% accurately at her grade level. Linda Farrell: But before we do that write 100 percent in the third column.
[Graphics] Working on Accuracy
Linda Farrell: Oh my gosh. Three 100s in a row. We are going to move to set two. Can you find the passages that say set two?
[Graphics] Working on Accuracy: First reading of passage #1
Linda Farrell: Can you find the passages that say Set Two? Linda Farrell: Uh-huh. That's it. Okay. And when you're ready to read, I'm ready to take notes. Chloe: April [sic] day means tree day, tree day. Trees are important. That is why trees get a special day every year.
[Graphics] When the twins finished eating their apples it was time to get to work. Kim picked red apples. Jill got green apples. The green apples were not sweet.
As Chloe reads, Ms. Farrell makes note of any missed words, any self-corrections, and any repetitions. And then she starts her review with what Chloe got right.
Linda Farrell: The reason accuracy at every age is so important is that in early reading in easy texts you can guess and still get the gist, especially if you have good background knowledge. When the students get to 4th and 5th grade, and the pictures go away and the words are harder, guessing is no longer a strategy that works.
Linda Farrell: How many words are in that section? Chloe: 45? No, 49. Linda Farrell: 49 words in that section and you got 46 right. And that is 94 percent accuracy. Chloe charts her work, and then Ms. Farrell reviews the words that Chloe misread. This prepares her for the next reading.
Linda Farrell: Students are motivated to improve. They have charts. They chart how well they do and that's very motivating.
Linda Farrell: Underline the first word. Linda Farrell: That word is arbor. Read that word. Chloe: Arbor. Linda Farrell: Arbor. Arbor means tree. What does arbor mean?
[Graphics] Working on Accuracy: First reading of passage 2
After learning the word "Arbor," Chloe reads the same section as many times as she needs to until she reads it with 100% accuracy. Linda Farrell: Here's the good news. You got 49 words right. Linda Farrell: Yes. That's good news and I'm glad you're happy. Here's the not so good news. You had three repetitions. You repeated the words you read and you're only allowed to have two of those repetitions. So you get to read it again. Linda Farrell: Why do we have to read it one more time? Chloe: Because I got three overs and I didn't know what they're called. Linda Farrell: They're called repetitions. You repeated words, but overs works just fine.
[Graphics] Arbor Day means tree day, tree day. Trees are important. That is why trees get a special day every year.

[Graphics] Working on Accuracy: Reviewing Chloe's reading

[Graphics] Working on Accuracy: Prep for second reading of passage 2
Chloe: Arbor Day means tree day. Trees are important. These repeated readings help Chloe improve on this particular passage, and they also help her develop good habits for the long haul. It's hard work, but Chloe wraps up the day's lesson with a strong finish.
[Graphics] Working on Accuracy: Second reading of passage 2

Linda Farrell: If a student has the habit of going back and rereading, repeating what they're reading, or self-correcting what they read, it slows them down and it hurts their comprehension.

[Graphics] Working on Accuracy: Second reading of Arbor Day section
After a few more sessions, Chloe was consistently able to read passages with 100% accuracy. But she was still reading slowly. So now Ms. Farrell will focus on increasing Chloe's reading rate, or the pace at which Chloe is able to read accurately. If you think of reading as riding a bicycle, fluency means you can turn the pedals fast enough to have a smooth ride. Pedal too slowly, and the bike falls over. Read too slowly, and you may not be able to understand what you read.
Arbor Day means tree day. Trees are important.

[Graphics] Working on Accuracy: Third reading of passage #2: Arbor Day
Linda Farrell: So we're going to start now on working on rate. So Chloe, are you ready to work on rate?
Linda Farrell: How many words do you think you got right? 49 words, 100 percent, and only one self-correction. How do you feel about that? Yes.
Linda Farrell: So your goal is to read 60 words a minute and not make any mistakes. So, what we're going to have you do, Chloe, is read for one minute, I'll time it, but you don't have to read fast just read naturally. Olu, I think Chloe and I are ready to work together.
[Graphics] Fluency Lesson 2: Reading to Improve Rate. Working on Chloe's rate of reading accurately
Before Chloe reads, Ms. Farrell will review words that may be difficult to pronounce or that have an unusual spelling pattern. This allows Chloe to do her rate practice without being stumped by a word we wouldn't expect her to know, yet.
Linda Farrell: Rate has been shown by many studies to correlate very closely with comprehension. Children need to read fast enough so that they can hold their ideas in their mind.
Linda Farrell: We have one word to review. So that word is on line 44. That word is rough. Can you read rough? Chloe: Rough. Linda Farrell: That word is rough. Rough means it's not smooth. Chloe: like if I have a bath cloth and it's rough. And now Chloe is ready to read.
[Graphics] Working on Rate. Chloe's goal: 60 accurate words per minute
Chloe: All cats are related. Tigers, lions, and the cats people have as pets. Linda Farrell: [alarm] Stop. And that time you read 46 words. Chloe: Is that good or bad? Linda Farrell: Well, here is what's good: you got 100% accurate and you only had one time that you repeated, one time. Chloe: If I had three repeat I would have to start over, but one is repeat okay? Linda Farrell: One repeat is acceptable, that means it's okay. Two repeats is acceptable, that means it's okay. And three repeats is too many. Chloe: Which is not acceptable. Linda Farrell: That's right, it's not acceptable.
Linda Farrell: The reading rate is generally measured as words correct per minute. Lots of people think it's how fast or what speed the student is reading, but it's really a measure of how many words correct do children read in a certain time, usually it's one minute when we're assessing. So it is speed. It is how fast they're reading, but it's also how accurately they're reading.
Linda Farrell: Okay, so we get to start again because now we want you to read accurately and we're going to aim for 60 words a minute.
Linda Farrell: When we first started working with Chloe she was reading I believe about 38 words correct per minute. And she still, even after we practiced, read relatively slowly. So once she met her accuracy goal, now we look at what's the 2nd grade middle of year benchmark and it's around 65 or 70 words a minute in 2nd grade material.
Chloe: All cats are related. Tigers, lions, and the cats people have as pets. Linda Farrell: You got 63 words correct and 100 percent accuracy. You read every word correctly and you didn't have any self-corrections or repetitions. You made it! You got your goal, girl!
[Graphics] Working on Rate. Previewing words that might be difficult for Chloe.
Now that Chloe has demonstrated that she can read accurately at 60 words per minute, Ms. Farrell helps Chloe focus on expression. Expressive reading means that students are using phrasing, emphasis, and timing as they read aloud. When children read with expression, they are reading the way they talk, and this usually means that they understand what they're reading.
[Graphics] Working on Rate. First reading of a passage for rate. All cats are related. Tigers, lions, and the cats people have as pets.
Linda Farrell: This time when you read, could you just read like you talk? You're reading a little slowly, like what you do is you say all-cats-are-related. And then there's a period, and then you stop a long time before you go to the next word every time you come to a period. Can you not stop quite so long when you come to a period? Chloe: Yeah, my dad tells me to or my mom or dad tells me to like stop when you see a period, you kind of like stop. Not trying to take too long. I just take a breathe and then go to the next line. I didn't know it was taking so long. Linda Farrell: Yeah, it's really good the way you're stopping. What we want you to do is not stop quite so long. Linda Farrell: Watch me. All cats are related. Tigers, lions and the cats people have as pets all have many things in common. Do you hear how I don't stop quite as long? Can you try that? Chloe: Okay. All cats are related. Tigers, lions and the cats people have as pets all have many things in common They all have four toes on their front feet and four toes on their back feet.
[Graphics] Working on Rate. Second reading of passage 3.
Linda Farrell: You aren't going to believe how many words you read that time. First of all, 100 percent accuracy. How much accuracy did you get? Chloe: 100 percent accurate. Linda Farrell: Yep, you read every single read correctly. You got 80 words a minute. Linda Farrell: 80 words a minute, with 100 percent accuracy is phenomenal.
[Graphics] All cats are related. Tigers, lions, and the cats people have as pets.
Now that Chloe's reading more fluently, her rate goal will be adjusted to 90 words a minute, which is the end of year benchmark for second grade. What seems like quick improvement is actually due to a lot of hard work. Ms. Farrell says Chloe needs a little more practice - roughly ten minutes at a time, twice a week, for the next month or two. As Chloe becomes a more accurate and faster reader, she and her mom will enjoy reading together even more. Linda Farrell: Olu and Chloe, it's always so much fun to read with you. See you next time. Olu Smoak: Same here. We enjoyed it. Thank you so much. Bye bye. Chloe: Bye bye! This episode of Looking at Reading Interventions was produced by a partnership of the National Education Association and WETA. For more information on the teaching practices featured in this program, please check out our viewer's guide. You can also download our facilitator's guide, offering helpful ideas for using this program for professional development. You'll find both guides at We are deeply grateful to Chloe and her entire family for allowing us to share Chloe's experience with reading intervention. We'd like to thank Linda Farrell, Michael Hunter, and Nicole Lubar of Readsters for their invaluable contributions to this project. readingrockets.org/interventions.
[Graphics] Lesson Three: Expression. Moving from word-by-word reading to reading "like you talk"

[Graphics] Working on Expression

[Graphics] Working on Expression. Celebrating Success.

Linda Farrell: What we do is that we have a reasonable goal that we think she can make. So we just wanted to get her to 60. What was so surprising about Chloe is that once we talked to her about reading like you talk, and I modeled for her, she went up to 80 words a minute!

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Reading Fluency with Chloe, Second Grader

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In this online lesson, reading expert Linda Farrell helps second grader Chloe master the three key elements of reading fluency - accuracy, reading rate, and reading with expression. Watch how Ms. Farrell gives Chloe explicit instruction and encouragement through all three steps, each building on the previous stage.

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This great video demonstrated the correct way to teach a third-grade boy how to decode words into syllables. The teacher is encouraging and gives the child immediate feedback, and discusses how the child has improved.

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Transcript

Reading Multisyllable Words with Xavier, Third Grader
Xavier: I think, he - he's kind of bad. Linda Farrell: Oh. Dog Man is? Xavier: Yeah - at his job. Linda Farrell: He sure is. He chews the table leg. Oh my gosh. Reading expert Linda Farrel is working with Xavier, a third grader at Windy Hill Elementary in Calvert County, Maryland. She'll be helping him learn how to read multi-syllable words.
Xavier: ... going to study Flippy's brain.

Linda Farrell: When we visit classrooms, it's a big issue: "The kids do well with small words, but they can't read big words." So I'll ask a student to read. And they look at a word and it's volcanic and they read volcano. Or it's fanatic and they read fantasy. So they guess the most common word that has that configuration that that word looks like it has. What they don't know is how to break a word into syllables so that you're not reading a big word that you have to memorize, but you're just going, "Oh, there's a little word, a little word, a little word.
Linda Farrell: I'm gonna have you read some nonsense words. They all have short vowels. So, could you just read these three nonsense words. Linda Farrell: Good. Alright. What are these three? Linda Farrell: Your, uh, this is pretty easy, isn't it. Yeah. This is too easy. We're done with that one. Okay? Now I'm gonna teach you about reading two-syllable words. This is kinda fun.
Linda Farrell: We started with nonsense words with Xavier because often syllables are nonsense words ... that when you combine them they become real words. So teaching nonsense words is not an exercise in futility. It is preparing children to read multi-syllable words.
Ms. Farrell now knows Xavier can read one-syllable words with short vowels. Next she checks to make sure he knows what a syllable is, because breaking long words into syllables is the key to the strategy she'll be teaching him.
Linda Farrell: I just remembered something. I have to make sure you know what a syllable is. Okay. So look at me. My name is Linda. It has two syllables in it. Lin. Da. Linda. So what's your name?
Linda Farrell: How many syllables in your name? Xavier: Four. Linda Farrell: Okay. Let's stomp them.
Xavier: /Ex/, /ay/, I mean, /ex/, /zay/, /vee/, /er/. Xavier.
Linda Farrell: You got it.
Linda Farrell: How many syllables in computer?
Linda Farrell: Yes. You got it. So you know what a syllable is. Alright. Cause that's really important if we're gonna read these big words. So if I look at this word, and I want to know how to read that, the first thing I have to do is figure out how many syllables are in it. And I can do that by figuring out what the vowels are. Do you know what the vowel letters are? Xavier: 'A, e, i, o ,u.' Linda Farrell: You got it. Those are the vowel letters. So here's what I know. Every syllable has a vowel in it. So in order to figure out how many syllables there are, I have to count the vowels. So can you tell me ... how many vowel letters do you see in that word? Linda Farrell: Yep. Are they together or apart? Xavier: Apart. Linda Farrell: They are apart. If I have two vowels - letters, and they're apart, I'm going to have two syllables. So I'm gonna draw two lines right here, and I have to have a vowel letter in every syllable. So can you break that word into two syllables for me? Linda Farrell: Now this is a nonsense word, so we're gonna read it. What's the first syllable? Linda Farrell: What's the word? Linda Farrell: So read it again. Linda Farrell: And the word is ... Linda Farrell: That's a nonsense word. I just made it up. I literally just made that word up right now. I've never even seen that word before. But we now know what to do if we have a word that we don't know. So let's try another word. Linda Farrell: Oh! You got the first two syllables - you got the first syllable right. How many vowels do you see? Xavier: Three. Linda Farrell: Together or apart. Xavier: Apart. Linda Farrell: Okay. Linda Farrell: Okay. Read each syllable. Xavier: /Vol/, /cay/ ... Linda Farrell: Hmmm. What's that middle syllable? Xavier: ... /can/, /ic/. Linda Farrell: Touch each syllable and read it. Xavier: /Vol/, /can/, /ic/ ... Linda Farrell: Mm-hmm. Linda Farrell: Wait. Wait. What's that? Linda Farrell: Yeah. Let's do it again.
Xavier: /Vol/, /can/, /ic/. Volcanic.

Linda Farrell: You just read volcanic. So what are the syllables in volcanic?
Xavier: 'O' ... Linda Farrell: Those are the vowels. What's the first syllable? Xavier: /Vol/, /can/, /ic/.
Linda Farrell: I'm gonna ask you to do something. I'm erasing this. Okay. So say volcanic.

Linda Farrell: How many syllables in volcanic?
Xavier: Three.
Linda Farrell: Okay. I would like you to please see if you can spell each syllable in volcanic. So draw three lines right up here.

Linda Farrell: Do you think you can spell volcanic? What's the first syllable?
Linda Farrell: What's that syllable? What'd you just spell? Linda Farrell: Okay. Next one. Linda Farrell: Now write the whole word.
Linda Farrell: Oh my gosh. You just spelled volcanic. You couldn't even read it and now you can spell it. That is pretty good. Do you want me to see if I can get a really hard one for you?

Linda Farrell: In teaching Xavier word attack skills, it's very important that we choose words with short vowels that have only one vowel all by itself. So you'll see we're not going to have words with 'silent e,' we're not going to have words with vowel teams. So we need two questions that we can ask Xavier that can help him break a big word into syllables so that all it is is little small words that he has to put together to read a big word. The two questions are ... how many vowels do you see? Are they together or apart? And what we teach him is that ... if you see three vowels and they're apart, you're going to have three syllables, because every syllable has a vowel. And then we teach him to draw a line for each syllable, write each syllable on a line, and then read each little word and then put them together.
Linda Farrell: Let's see if we can try this one. Linda Farrell: How many vowels did you see? Xavier: Three. Linda Farrell: Okay. Could you underline them please? Xavier: I mean four. Linda Farrell: Okay. Four vowels. Are they together or apart? Xavier: Apart. Linda Farrell: So how many syllables? Xavier: Four. Linda Farrell: Okay. Linda Farrell: Could you move that 'n' over there? Okay. Linda Farrell: Okay. So read each syllable. Xavier: /Con/, /tic/ ... Linda Farrell: What's that? Xavier: /ti/, /tin/ Linda Farrell: What's this? Linda Farrell: /t/, /i/. What is it? Linda Farrell: Okay. So it's ...
Xavier: /Con/, /ti/, /nin/, /tul/. Continental.

Linda Farrell: You just read continental. Are you ready for another one?
Xavier: Mm-hmm. Linda Farrell: Okay. Here we go. Let's try this one. Linda Farrell: How many vowels do you see? Xavier: /o/ and /i/, /e/ Linda Farrell: Okay. So how many? You can underline them if you want. Linda Farrell: Why don't you start here and go this way. Yeah. Linda Farrell: Okay. So how many? Xavier: Four. Linda Farrell: Together or apart? Xavier: Apart. Linda Farrell: Okay. Linda Farrell: Do you wanna try to read it without breaking it into syllables? Try it.
Xavier: Accosh - accomplishment.
Linda Farrell: What was the word?
Linda Farrell: It's accomplishment. You are right.
As Xavier grasps the strategy, you can see him thinking through the two questions: How many vowels? Are the vowels together or apart? And he's able to read big words without writing out the syllables. Linda Farrell: What's the word?
Linda Farrell: Wilmington! It's the name of a city ...

Linda Farrell: Xavier does a great job of learning how to attack a word. After this lesson he has a strategy to help him break words into syllables and read them. He will need lots of lessons. We start with short vowels, then we move to 'silent e,' then we move to vowel teams. So it's explicit and it's systematic when we're teaching him this. Xavier responded beautifully to reading these long words.
Linda Farrell: We're gonna do one more. It is ... Linda Farrell: You got it! That was a good one to end on. High five! Yes! We'd like to thank the wonderful students and families at Windy Hill Elementary School in Calvert County, Maryland. We hope that sharing these experiences will help other children who are learning to read. Special thanks also to Kelly Cleland, Julie Donovan, Joanne Harbaugh, and their outstanding colleagues at Windy Hill Elementary ... and to Leanne Meisinger at Calvert County Public Schools. We are deeply grateful to Linda Farrell, Michael Hunter, and Nicole Lubar of Readsters for their invaluable contributions to this project.
Produced by Noel Gunther

Edited by Christian Lindstrom

Graphic Design: Tina Chovanec

Camera: Richard Chisolm

Audio: Dwayne Dell
For more information about teaching reading, please visit www.ReadingRockets.org
Reading Rockets is a service of WETA, Washington, D.C.

© 2019, WETA, Washington, D.C.

Extra tips from the session with Xavier

1. Learning Multisyllabic Words with 'Silent e' and Vowel Teams

After Xavier learns how to read words with one vowel all by itself in each syllable, the next thing we do is we teach him 'silent e,' so that if he gets a word like porcupine that has 'silent e' at the end, we teach him - we add a new question. And it is: do you see a 'silent e' at the end? So then we say, "How many vowels do you see?"

And he'll say, "Four."

"Are they together or apart?"

"They're apart."

"Do you see a 'silent e' - yeah - at the end?"

"Yes."

And then he sees a 'silent e' at the end, and you know that that 'silent e' stays in the syllable with the vowel before it. So of course they have to read one syllable words with 'silent e' before they can read multi-syllable words with 'silent e.' It's just another question. So then we read some of those.

Then the next step is to read words with vowel teams. So let's say the words is refrain. "How many vowels do you see?"

"Three."

"Are they together or apart?"

"One is apart, and two of the vowels are together."

Well, we teach you that when two vowel letters are together, they stick together in the syllable. So you're only going to have two syllables in that word. But of course, in order to read refrain, you have to be able to know that 'a-i' spells /ay/, so you would have to be able to read one syllable words with vowel teams before you go to two syllable or three syllable or four syllable. It's very simple. It's not - there aren't any really rules that we teach. It's how do you look at a word and break it up.

2. Sounding Out New Multisyllabic Words

If they saw the word 'r-o-b-i-n' and they, I said, "How many vowels do you see?"

"Two."

"Together, apart?"

"Apart."

"See a 'silent e'?"

"No."

"How many syllables?"

"Two."

"What's the word?"

"/roe-bin/."

"Could be /roe-bin/. You decoded it perfectly. Flex that first 'o' to a short 'o' instead of a long 'o.'"

So the kid goes /rah-bin/. Oh, robin. And if the word's in his vocabulary, he'll go - "Oh! Robin." And if the word robin isn't in his vocabulary, he'll go /rah-bin/, /rah-bin/. And you know it's not in his vocabulary, and you say, "That word's /rah-bin/. It's like a bird. What's that word?" " Robin."

3. Mastering Reading Accuracy

Maryland third grader Xavier is sharing one of his favorite books with reading expert Linda Farrell. Ms. Farrell is going to help him focus on reading every word accurately.
Linda Farrell: Can you read some of this to me? Can you read?
Xavier: Look. We're heroes because we save the world from Flippy. This - it says here that scientists are going to study Flippy brain.
Linda Farrell: Get the 's' on that. Linda Farrell: What's this word right here - this one right here? Linda Farrell: Yeah. Read that whole thing again.
Xavier: It says here that scien- scientists are going to study Flippy's brain.
Linda Farrell: Keep going.
Xavier: Dog Man, I have a important job for you.
Linda Farrell: What's that word? Linda Farrell: Keep reading again. Xavier: Dog Man, I have a, an important job for you.
Linda Farrell: Can you read that - an important.
Linda Farrell: Read it again.
Xavier: ... important. Dog Man, I have an portant job ...

Linda Farrell: Okay. We're gonna do this. Read this with me. An.

Linda Farrell: Important.

Xavier: Important.

Linda Farrell: Now do it. So read An.

Linda Farrell: im

Linda Farrell: por

Linda Farrell: tant

Xavier: tant
Linda Farrell: Okay. Now, read it again.
Xavier: Dog Man, I have an important job for you.
Linda Farrell: Keep going.
Linda Farrell: One of the things I notice is that teachers often will let an inaccurate reading slip by if the meaning isn't changed. Ah, it's close enough. Move on. And that is setting students up for poor comprehension.
Take for example a sentence like, "The horse got a cold." If a student leaves out the article a and reads it, "The horse got cold," the meaning changes significantly. Linda Farrell: Wait. Who's what?
Linda Farrell: That one little word that seems so inconsequential, a, made a difference in meaning. "The horse got cold" and "the horse got a cold is different." We never know when that's going to make a difference in comprehension. We have to build good, strong reading habits for students. And that means as a teacher, it's my job to help my students develop accurate reading habits so that they don't miss a question on a comprehension test because they misread a sentence. They left off an 's.' They left off, they left out an article. They added an article. They read present tense instead of past tense. They read - they read a contraction incorrectly. All of those can lead to poor comprehension. And we need, in kindergarten, first and second grade and even third grade, to be making sure that our students read accurately. It's our responsibility.
Linda Farrell: Yeah.
Xavier: Who wants to protect the scientists? Who's a good boy protector?
Linda Farrell: And what's that word?
Xavier: Who's a good boy - good protector.
Linda Farrell: Okay. I'm gonna tell you that 'v' is - that 'e' is silent. So what does that say? Linda Farrell: You got it. So read that again.
Xavier: Who - who wants to protect an, and survive?

Xavier: Surva - suh-verve?
Linda Farrell: And what does he do? Does he save people? Xavier: Yeah. He helps people. These are ...
Xavier: Who wants to protect and serve?

Linda Farrell: We're teaching students, our children, that every letter does make a difference and that when you come to an unfamiliar word, you have to pay attention to every letter. And then when you read that word two or three times, it then becomes a word that you've seen before and you just read it because it's part of your vocabulary and you've seen that spelling before.

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Reading Multisyllable Words with Xavier, Third Grader

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Reading expert Linda Farrell shows Xavier how to read and spell unfamiliar multisyllable words with one vowel letter in each syllable. First she makes sure that Xavier has three prerequisite skills: being able to read one-syllable nonsense words, knowing how to count syllables in spoken words, and naming the vowel letters.

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I listened to several videos focusing on writing.

1. I love the example of making a poem suitcase. Students write a poem on an index card (after explicit, systematic instruction) and attach it to an object. Throughout the year, when there are a few extra minutes in the day, a chosen child takes one of the objects and reads the poem. The class then discusses and celebrates the writing.

2. Writing notebooks are shared with the class, and revisions are discussed individually. A respectful community of writers is developed.

3. Mentor texts guide children by providing examples they can imitate.

4. The teacher also writes each day and shares her writing with the class.

5. explicit instruction is given on what vivid verbs are. The teacher reads a book orally while students put up two fingers for a "v" and discuss the vivid verb in the story's context.

6. Semantic Gradient Words are given to groups of students (after a discussion of vocabulary). Students work together to arrange words from less precise to most precise.

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Explore annotated writing samples from kids in pre-K through grade 3, and see next-step suggestions for instruction. You'll also learn about writing milestones and different purposes of writing - along with ideas for how to make room for writing during the day.

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This is a great part of the ALL Ohio model that shows a format for introducing new phonics concepts, instructional routines, and practice activities for teaching students to decode and encode words. Part 2 focuses on the instructional routines and practices that exemplify explicit and systematic phonics instruction. In this module (Part 3), you will learn how to introduce phoneme-grapheme correspondences and implement activities that allow students to practice target phonics patterns.

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This is a transcript of Joan Sedita, author of "The Writing Rope," Sedita shares the guidelines that demystify helping students learn to write and write to learn. She explores ways educators can plan and deliver comprehensive, explicit, and evidence-based writing instruction aligned with IDA’s Structured Literacy approach and based on the latest research. The focus of the book is on grades 4–8, but much of what Sedita addresses can be used in earlier grades and high school.

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The Writing Rope: A Framework for Evidence-Based Writing Instruction

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Writing is a task as complex and multifaceted as reading—but it’s often taught as a single skill. Our podcast guest is Joan Sedita, the successful author of the popular book, The Writing Rope.

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Drs. Vroom and Zoleo provide an overview of the Hochman Method, an explicit set of specific writing strategies that teachers use in every grade and in all subjects, including ELA, social studies, science, world languages, and math. This evidence-based and proven instructional methodology enables students to master the skills that are essential if they are to become competent writers. Those skills equip students to become better readers, to communicate more effectively in writing and speaking, and, most importantly, to elevate their thinking. The Hochman Method concerns writing challenges: the cognitive demands of writing, the interplay of writing with reading comprehension and knowledge, the scaffolding of writing instruction, and the importance of planning and revising. Key strategies are discussed that can be implemented immediately with students, either in writing or through oral practice.

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The Writing Revolution: An Overview of the Hochman Method (#3 Spotlight)

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Classwide Peer Tutoring (CWPT) is a system that allows students increased opportunities for reading practice combined with immediate feedback. CWPT consists of peer dyads organized by the teacher that allows students to take ownership of their learning while increasing academic engagement, immediate corrective feedback, high levels of mastery, and sufficient content coverage. The components of CWPT contain (a) tutor/tutee reciprocal roles, (b) frequent opportunities to practice as well as receive constructive feedback on a student's performance, (c) weekly evaluations, (d) self-regulation through performance monitoring, (e) both individual and group positive reinforcers, and (f) publicly shared performance outcomes. Researchers have shown that CWPT increases students' reading performance not only at the elementary level but also at the secondary level.

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This is another teacher talking about how to teach children to write expository writing.

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The Writing Revolution and the Tools That Teach It