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FREE trainings and resources

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Really Great Reading | Specialists in Reading Education

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When I began to learn about phonics instruction, I saw spelling puzzles in words I'd never noticed before, and I gained appreciation for the difficulty of learning to decode. Now, as an increasing number of students at my school can read accurately, the challenge of comprehension is looming large.

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https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/popular-literacy-materials-get-science-of-reading-overhaul-but-will-teaching-change/2021/10

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Popular Literacy Materials Get ‘Science of Reading’ Overhaul. But Will Teaching Change?

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Lucy Calkins and Jennifer Serravallo are among those releasing updates that move away from unproven techniques like three-cueing.

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Thank you for your interest in working with The Reading League. We appreciate your desire to learn more about what the scientific research evidence base says about reading, and how you can use it to benefit your students. Before entering into a formal long-term professional development relationship with schools, we require a full day with administrators. As building and district leaders, your commitment to increasing your own knowledge is vital to the success of transforming literacy instruction and achievement in your schools. This important day ensures that all leaders have common understandings and send consistent messages. After the Administrator Introduction Day is complete, we hope to collaborate and draft a plan to suit your needs, which may include various professional development options and coaching.
Morning Session: Introduction to The Evidence Base

Activating prior knowledge about reading

The Reading League's origin, mission, and what we do

What does available assessment data say about how we are doing as a nation and locally?

What does the research on teacher knowledge tell us?

What does 40+ years of scientific research on reading tell us? (an overview of the larger ideas, as this takes years to learn deeply)

What are some myths and misconceptions?

Afternoon Session: What It Takes to Transform Literacy Instruction

Data and growth stories from our partnerships: What is possible?

Transformative vs. additive approaches to change

What is it like to work with The Reading League?

What to expect in the transformation process

How to learn more

Discussion

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Thank you for your interest in working with The Reading League. We appreciate your desire to learn more about what the scientific research evidence base says about reading, and how you can use it to benefit your students. Before entering into a formal long-term professional development relationship with schools, we require a full day with administrators.

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School Administrators

IMSE offers extensive professional development and customized programs so that your school can find success. We work with you before, during, and after to make sure the implementation process is as efficient as possible.

Bring IMSE to your school

Educators

Our program prides itself on the ability to assess and differentiate every student in a classroom. By taking our professional development course and implementing direct, explicit, sequential, and systematic instruction, you can become an effective literacy educator and use the science of reading to drive your instruction.

Parents

As a parent, you play an important role in your child's literacy development. From nurturing early literacy skills to understanding intervention strategies, no one will be more invested and informed than you. IMSE is here to help in any way.

What is Orton-Gillingham?

Orton-Gillingham is an explicit, sequential, systematic, and multi-sensory approach used to teach literacy. Our evidence-based program breaks reading and writing into smaller skills involving letters and sounds, then builds on these skills over time.

Our Mission

What Is Effective Reading Instruction?

Reading has two basic components: Word Recognition and Language Comprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). In order give students the best chance at learning those skills, classrooms must use a Structured Literacy™ approach that is based in the science of reading. That means teaching phonology, morphology, syntax, and more Structured Literacy components using an explicit, sequential, systematic, and multi-sensory approach.

What other teachers are saying about IMSE training

"In less than a year, we've seen a huge jump in our reading benchmarks... At the beginning of the school year, only 34% of our students were testing at benchmark for literacy skills. By implementing IMSE's Orton-Gillingham methods in our lessons, that number jumped to 84% by January of this year. So, we've seen great gains in a very short amount of time."

Molly Henry

Literacy Coach
Greenwood Elementary

"I would absolutely recommend this training to anybody. I saw the results so quickly... it made me more confident as an educator and I've watched the confidence in my students go up... I've been to many trainings where you go back to the classroom and you're not really sure how to incorporate it into your classroom. With IMSE, it's so different. I saw the results so quickly. If you stick with it, IMSE is so supportive and helpful."

Lori Mikulka

K-3 reading teacher
Global Village Academy

"We recognized we weren't just investing in our students' success, we were investing in our teachers. We trained all of our pre K through second grade staff, and special education teachers, no matter the grade level, so they could implement it as far as they needed to, as well as all of our academic support staff. There is the misconception that when you hear Orton-Gillingham, traditionally you would think of it as being a remedial program for s...

Flora Encarnacao

K-3 reading teacher
Kearny School District

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IMSE | institute for multi-sensory education

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IMSE offers extensive professional development and customized programs so that your school can find success. We work with you before, during, and after to make sure the implementation process is as efficient as possible. Bring IMSE to your school Our program prides itself on the ability to assess and differentiate every student in a classroom.

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Easy to access concise list.

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As educators, we are always learning and growing in order to improve reading instruction. It can be challenging to sift through the many resources available, so we have created a list for you. The following includes a list of 30 resources for educators who wish to further their knowledge about the Science of Reading.

5 "Must See" Resources to Get Started
1. EAB Report: Narrowing the 3rd Grade Reading Gap (10 minute read)
A research brief for educators embracing the science of reading from the EAB District Leadership Forum. This is an accessible read for educators who want to learn more and implement classroom instruction that is aligned to the science of reading.

2. Of 'Hard Words' and Straw Men: Let's Understand What Reading Science is Really About by Louisa Moats (5 minute read)

An article about what the Science of Reading really entails and how important it is to really have an understanding of the components of foundational literacy instruction in order to implement them effectively into the classroom.

3. Hard Words: Why Aren't Kids Being Taught to Read? (45 minute listen)
Emily Hanford, educational journalist has researched reading instruction across the US. Her findings sparked conversations about The Science of Reading and how we can improve reading proficiency in the US. 4. Videos: Is My Kid Learning to Read? (Part 1 and Part 2; 26 minutes) How many students are being taught to read in the classroom can be eye-opening for parents. Watch this two-part video series to learn more about how students may be learning to read and how to best support them as they continue to learn to read. 5. Reading Rockets website
Okay, we kind of cheated with #5, but if you read nothing else on Reading Rockets, be sure to check out their articles on Phonological and Phonemic Awareness and Why Phonological Awareness is Important for Reading and Spelling .

Infographics

6. The Ladder of Reading by Nancy Young

7. Scarborough's Reading Rope

"The genesis of the Reading Rope dates back to Scarborough's lectures for parents on the complexities involved in learning to read. Originally, she spoke of skilled reading as resembling the 'strands' of a rope, using pipe cleaners to illustrate the interconnectedness and interdependence of all the components."

8. How Our Brains Learn to Read

Our brains are naturally set up to learn to speak, but learning to read does not happen on its own. Scientists have found that we must develop certain parts of our brains and build connections between brain areas that were not connected before. The picture (below) shows four different areas of our brains that we use when we read.

Podcasts

9. Educate by APM Reports

Stories about education, opportunity, and how people learn. Emily Hanford podcasts are recommended and two favorites are listed below:

At a Loss for Words (52 minutes; published Aug. 22, 2019)

National Assessment Shows More K-12 Students Struggling to Read (25 minutes; published Nov. 1, 2019)

10. Glean Education: Research to Practice

Dive into current research, hot topics, and success stories with our two podcast series for educators.

Why Phonological Awareness is Important to Reading? (23 minutes; published Jan. 3, 2019)

How to Make Sight Word Instruction and Reading Intervention More Effective ( 50 minutes published Oct. 1, 2020)

11. Science of Reading: The Podcast by Amplify Education

The latest insights from researchers and practitioners in early reading. Each episode takes a conversational approach and explores a timely topic related to the science of reading.

12. Teaching, Reading & Learning: The Podcast by The Reading League

Listen to speakers who have made important contributions to the educational community as they discuss reading and writing, but connect to other "literacies" that impact children's learning .

Websites, Blogs & Webinars

13. The Reading League

The Reading League is a non-profit organization focused on the mission to advance awareness, understanding, and use of evidence-based reading instruction.

14. Right to Read Project

A group of teachers, researchers, and activists committed to the pursuit of equity through literacy.

15. Louisa Moats

A website from Literacy Expert, Louisa Moats, includes webinars, blogs, and articles for educators committed to best practices in literacy instruction.

16. The Literacy Nest

Emily Gibbons, certified dyslexia practitioner and creator of The Literacy Nest shares resources for instruction for struggling readers.

17. CORE Learn

The Consortium on Reaching Excellence is Education (CORE) provides many excellent resources and free professional learning opportunities.

18. The Learning Spark

A kindergarten teacher who shares her experience along with many resources in the areas of literacy.

19. Education Week

A website sharing in-depth information and research serving K-12 education.

Articles & Research

20. Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel (2008)

21. Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read (2000)

22. Learning to Read: Center for Early Reading (

23. Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science: What Expert Teachers of Reading Should Know and Be Able to Do, 2020 by Louisa Moats, published by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)

Teacher Resources

24. Florida Center for Reading Research: FCRR

25. University of Florida Literacy Institute: UFLI

26. The Simple View of Reading

Professional Books

27. Speech to Print by Louisa Moats (2014)

28. Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties by David Kilpatrick (2015)

29. Phonics from A to Z by Wiley Blevins (2017)

30. Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print by Marilyn Adams (1994)

Did we miss a resource? Please leave a comment and let us know!

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30 Science of Reading Resources | Heggerty

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As educators, we are always learning and growing in order to improve reading instruction. It can be challenging to sift through the many resources available, so we have created a list for you. The following includes a list of 30 resources for educators who wish to further their knowledge about the Science of Reading.

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Data back research to end RR

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This evaluation (PDF, 1.8MB) examined the impact of Reading Recovery (RR) on students' outcomes in NSW government schools. The evaluation found some evidence that RR has a modest short-term effect on reading skills among the lowest performing students. However, RR does not appear to be an effective intervention for students that begin Year 1 with more proficient literacy skills. In the longer-term, there was no evidence of any positive effects of RR on students' reading performance in Year 3.

Related: Learning Curve 11 - Reading Recovery

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This evaluation (PDF, 1.8MB) examined the impact of Reading Recovery (RR) on students' outcomes in NSW government schools. The evaluation found some evidence that RR has a modest short-term effect on reading skills among the lowest performing students. However, RR does not appear to be an effective intervention for students that begin Year 1 with more proficient literacy skills.

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Musings of an edugeek, curriculum evangelist, meme aficionado, and mom

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Spelling for life

There is a myth that English spelling is unnecessarily complex. It is spread by those who don't understand the writing system. Spelling for Life offers lucid, accessible tools which help to reveal that, when explicitly and systematically taught,

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Bringing high quality, research-supported literacy instruction to teachers and families - Lifelong Literacy

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WELCOME TO LIFELONG LITERACY We bring high quality, research-supported literacy instruction to schools, educators, and families. COURSES Our suite of online and face to face courses will help build teacher and educator capacity for individuals and whole school teams. BOOKS & RESOURCES Discover Lyn Stone's flagship books as well as a range of low-cost and ...

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The Riches of Speech-Language Pathology – Literacy & Language https://t.co/EOVt2yfuRw

#SLP #SLpeeps #DevLangDis #DLDSeeMe #CodeREaD @DrSandraM @CodeReadNetwork @FIVEfromFIVE #Dyslexia #DyslexiaAwarenessMonth #ScienceOfReading #StructuredLiteracy #SimpleViewOfReading @mandercorn

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Isabelle Duquennois | Structured Literacy Alliance

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When I was a special education teacher, I also coordinated the IEPs (Individualized Education Programs) for my school, and served as the district representative at our IEP meetings, meaning that I …

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Isabelle Duquennois | Phonatic Lunacy Alliance

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Isabelle Duquennois | Phonatic Lunacy Alliance

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The Riches of Speech-Language Pathology – Literacy & Language https://t.co/EOVt2yfuRw#SLP #SLpeeps #DevLangDis #DLDSeeMe #CodeREaD @DrSandraM @CodeReadNetwork @FIVEfromFIVE #Dyslexia #DyslexiaAwarenessMonth #ScienceOfReading #StructuredLiteracy #SimpleViewOfReading @mandercorn pic.twitter.com/atVKjAGCpc
— Isabelle Duquennois | Phonatic Lunacy Alliance (@Isaology) October 22, 2020

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Isabelle Duquennois | Phonatic Lunacy Alliance

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The Riches of Speech-Language Pathology – Literacy & Language https://t.co/EOVt2yfuRw

#SLP #SLpeeps #DevLangDis #DLDSeeMe #CodeREaD @DrSandraM @CodeReadNetwork @FIVEfromFIVE #Dyslexia #DyslexiaAwarenessMonth #ScienceOfReading #StructuredLiteracy #SimpleViewOfReading @mandercorn

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Isabelle Duquennois | Phonatic Lunacy Alliance

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The Writing Revolution - Empower teachers to help students

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By training educators in The Hochman Method©, The Writing Revolution (TWR) aims to help all students become proficient writers, readers, and critical thinkers.

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Vocabulary matters. Words matter. When I use a word, I want those on the receiving end to understand it as I intend it. This doesn't always happen, of course, but I'm always wary... read more →

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W.V.C.ED provides professional development that engages and prepares teachers to increase their effectiveness with students.

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Pattan Lit Conference

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Dykstra - If We Are So Right, How Come So Many People Think We're Wrong?

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Advancing Science of Reading in the Early Years - K–5 Literacy Program & Curriculum | Amplify CKLA

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Advancing Science of Reading in the Early Years - K–5 Literacy Program & Curriculum | Amplify CKLA

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Dr. Carolyn Storm explains EXACTLY how the brain learns to read

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Advancing Science of Reading in the Early Years - K–5 Literacy Program & Curriculum | Amplify CKLA

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Reading League- explain PF research

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Understanding Statistics and Research: Even if You Really, Really Hate Math

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Scholarships available thru Nor Cal IDA

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Description

This course provides participants with an overview of the Wilson Reading System ® (WRS) 4th Edition curriculum and serves as the prerequisite for WRS Level I Certification. Over three consecutive days (16.5 hours), this course examines how WRS addresses the teaching of phonemic awareness, word identification, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension through an integrated study of phonology, morphology, and orthography with students in grade two and above with persistent phonological coding deficits.

Participants learn about reading research, dyslexia, appropriate student identification and placement, program implementation, progress monitoring, scheduling, and creating a successful learning environment. Principles of language structure and how to teach language with direct, multisensory methods are demonstrated and practiced during the course. Participants explore the standard 10-part Wilson Lesson Plan and practice planning and delivering a lesson while receiving modeling and feedback from a Wilson ® Credentialed Trainer during the course.

Course Objectives

Upon completion of the course, participants will be able to:

Define dyslexia and describe common characteristics.

Explain the process of identifying appropriate students and placing them in the Wilson Reading System.

Understand the principles of instruction: explicit, sequential and cumulative, engaging multiple learning modalities with multisensory techniques, repetition, and feedback.

Create an optimal learning environment, prepare a lesson plan, and practice techniques.

Understand the key components of instruction and presentation of lessons in three blocks:
Block 1 - Word Study/Foundational Reading Skills: Lesson Plan Parts 1-5
Phonemic Awareness, Decoding, Vocabulary, High Frequency Word Reading, Single-Word Accuracy/Automaticity, Phrasing/Prosody, Fluency and Comprehension at the Sentence Level

Block 2 - Spelling/Foundational Writing Skills: Lesson Plan Parts 6-8
Phoneme Segmentation, Encoding (Spelling), English Spelling Rules, High Frequency Word Spelling, Vocabulary, Concept Mark Up, Sentence-Level Punctuation and Proofreading

Block 3 - Fluency/Comprehension: Lesson Plan Parts 9-10
Vocabulary, Listening/Silent and Oral Reading Fluency and Comprehension, Narrative and Informational Text

Participants may enroll in the WRS Level I Certification Training or the online course WRS Intensive Instruction for the Non-Responsive Reader (Steps 1-6) within five years of completing a WRS Introductory Course.

Duration

3 consecutive days (16.5 hours)

3 consecutive days (16.5 hours)

One graduate credit (optional) is available through Fitchburg State University, Fitchburg, MA upon completion of course requirements. Please see Process for Graduate Credit for details.

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This course provides participants with an overview of the Wilson Reading System ® (WRS) 4th Edition curriculum and serves as the prerequisite for WRS Level I Certification. Over three consecutive days (16.5 hours), this course examines how WRS addresses the teaching of phonemic awareness, word identification, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension through an integrated study of phonology, morphology, and orthography with students in grade two and above with persistent phonological coding deficits.

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Zaner Bloser: Power of Evidence

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LISTEN TO PODCAST

Emily Hanford of American Public Media has written several award-winning reports about dyslexia and reading instruction (" At a Loss for Words: What's Wrong with How Schools Teach Reading?"). Each one has prompted nationwide discussion. I applaud the depth and insightfulness of these remarkable blogs and podcasts. You can listen to an interview with Hanford on this subject on October 22, 2019 here.

The time has come to call the public's attention to reading science and to dispel the misconceived beliefs and practices that are so widespread in our classrooms. Not all readers and listeners, however, are persuaded by Hanford's reporting. Various critics' blogs and opinion papers have challenged her analyses. In doing so, unfortunately, these skeptics have resurrected some worn-out straw men that once again, require rebuttal. They include the idea that reading science is just about phonics and scripted programs; that it does not address all the important aspects of teaching; and that it does not address reading comprehension.

First, the body of work referred to as "the science of reading" is not an ideology, a philosophy, a political agenda, a one-size-fits-all approach, a program of instruction, or a specific component of instruction. It is the emerging consensus from many related disciplines, based on literally thousands of studies, supported by hundreds of millions of research dollars, conducted across the world in many languages. These studies have revealed a great deal about how we learn to read, what goes wrong when students don't learn, and what kind of instruction is most likely to work the best for the most students. Mark Seidenberg's (2017) book, Language at the Speed of Sight, summarizes that science as well as any.

Second, with regard to the importance of teaching phonics systematically, explicitly, and cumulatively, the scientific consensus ( see Foorman et al., 2016) is very strong. Most of the studies that show positive effects in comparison to "business as usual" have provided phonics instruction about 30-45 minutes per day, using different instructional materials. Good phonics instruction, moreover, is hands-on and moves from presentation of a concept to practice exercises and then to its direct application in reading and spelling. If phonics instruction is boring, rote, or meaningless, as critics tend to claim, the fault is with the practitioner and/or program designer. As we provide ® (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling) professional development around the country, we find that many teachers simply don't know how to make phonics lessons fun and engaging. That is mainly because they have not been taught how spoken and written words work, and they are uncomfortable teaching students how to decode and spell. We can change that with good courses, better materials, and professional development like LETRS.

Third, the body of scientific evidence about reading is not limited to the importance of phonics instruction. Perhaps the most critical and least-practiced component of effective early instruction is phoneme awareness. Awareness of the sounds that make up spoken words, facility at manipulating those sounds, and the links between speech and print must be mastered for students to be fluent readers and accurate spellers of an alphabetic writing system like ours. Phonics and spelling instruction may not make sense to students unless they are developing a fairly high level of proficiency with phoneme awareness ( see Kilpatrick, 2015). Yet we still have many classrooms where little to no deliberate development of phonological skills takes place, and many kids fall behind as a result. The best antidote for this problem is instruction for teachers in the speech sound system and its correspondence with print, supported by good instructional materials.

Fourth, reading science has not neglected the importance of language comprehension and the challenges of reading comprehension. While this aspect of reading is more difficult to research than foundational reading skills, we can hang our hat on certain robust findings. They include the critical importance of building vocabulary and background knowledge for text reading, and the value of a content-rich curriculum that is more focused on what the students are learning about than it is on teaching specific comprehension skills ( e.g., see Wexler, 2019). Comprehension skills, such as how to find the main idea or how to write a summary, generalize better if they are practiced in the context of learning about a worthwhile topic.

As the Hard Words reports have documented, much classroom instruction is driven by ideas advanced by "balanced literacy" programs. "Balance" is an appealing term but in reality, it has meant little to no systematic instruction in foundational reading skills, including phoneme awareness, phonics, and fluent word recognition. Children are taught to rely on context and pictures to identify printed words, a practice that reinforces what poor readers naturally do. In all respects, from word reading skills to language comprehension development, these approaches are not consistent with best evidence.

A well-designed early-reading program would teach these foundational skills explicitly and systematically, with adequate time devoted to each:

Awareness of speech sounds, segmentation, manipulation of sounds

Letter formation and writing by hand

Phoneme-grapheme correspondences

Spelling patterns

Meaningful word parts (morphemes)

Then, each skill or concept would be applied to phrase, sentence, and passage reading-we hope in the context of learning about something of importance. Then, language comprehension can be nurtured through rich content learning, reading aloud, classroom discussion, and deliberate study of language at the level of sentences, paragraphs, and longer texts. Good instruction is never "regurgitation without comprehension."

We are, of course, facing many difficult challenges in education. But how to teach reading so most students learn early and well-THAT should be on the list of things we can do something about. We just have to bury a few more of those straw men.

References:

Foorman, B., Beyler, N., Borradaile, K., Coyne, M., Denton, C. A., Dimino, J., Furgeson, J., Hayes, L., Henke, J., Justice, L., Keating, B., Lewis, W., Sattar, S., Streke, A., Wagner, R., & Wissel, S. (2016). Foundational skills to support reading for understanding in kindergarten through 3rd grade (NCEE 2016-4008). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from the NCEE website: http://whatworks.ed.gov

Kilpatrick, D.A. (2015). Essentials of assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Seidenberg, M. (2017). Language at the speed of sight: How we read, why so many can't, and what can be done about it. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Wexler, N. (2019). The knowledge gap: The hidden cause of America's broken education system--and how to fix it. Random House, Avery Publishing Group.

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Of 'Hard Words' and Straw Men: Let's Understand What Reading Science is Really About

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Emily Hanford of American Public Media has written several award-winning reports about dyslexia and reading instruction ("At a Loss for Words: What's Wrong with How Schools Teach Reading?").

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After decades of neglect due to flawed whole language theory, the importance of explicit spelling instruction for reading comprehension is finally getting due diligence in research, paving the way for a resurgence of teaching English spelling in today's classrooms.

The spelling to read movement spotlights the importance of spelling for orthographic mapping and spelling's role in automatic word reading which drives reading comprehension. The critical role of spelling for reading is a focus in recent refereed journals in neuroscience and cognitive psychology as well as in recent books by reading scientists and educators (See for example Seidenberg, 2017; Gentry & Ouellette, 2019; Moats, 2020.) Landmark studies linking the research to practice have appeared in journals such as Developmental Psychology and Neuroimage. Spelling to read is not only trending in education journals, but in news reports, the media, and with dyslexia advocates and parent groups.
What happened to Spelling Instruction over the last three decades?
Explicit spelling instruction met its demise with the advent of whole language theory, aspects of which are now wholly debunked by science but regrettably continue to be practiced in classrooms. The late Ken Goodman whom I studied with and greatly admire for many worthy contributions to reading education such as promoting humanism and equity for all children, respect and advocacy for teachers, support for writing as a process and other positive ideals, was dead wrong about spelling, phonics, and handwriting. In What's Whole in Whole Language (1986) Professor Goodman catapulted four harmful core educational principles based on flawed theoretical assumptions. These principles have dominated reading education for three decades with perhaps the most disappointing and hurtful being a full frontal attack on phonics and explicit spelling instruction. The recommendations below from What's Whole in Whole Language (1986) are direct and unambiguous:

1. Do not to teach phonics explicitly because children will intuit phonics by reading. [A settled body of research says that was wrong.]

2. Do not to use spelling books or teach spelling explicitly and systematically. Expect children to pick up spelling skills simply by reading and writing. [A settled body of research says that was wrong.]

3. Do not to teach handwriting explicitly. Handwriting instruction is too laborious and impedes written expression. [A settled body of research says that was wrong.]

4. Since literacy develops from whole to part [a false assumption], there is no hierarchy of sub-skills or logical grade-by-grade sequence. [A settled body of research says that was wrong.] As it turns out, serial sub-lexical skills are foundational for the development of reading brain circuitry.

These four debunked principles must all be addressed to improve reading instruction moving forward. With much due respect, I am unapologetic for focusing on the four whole language signature missteps because all four are simple to correct. Schools and districts that continue to embrace the four misguided principles or use published curricula that embrace them (see the list below) must simply acknowledge these missteps and correct them. It's not complicated.

In a nation and elsewhere where 60% or more children by standardized measures read below proficiency, there is a moral imperative to correct these missteps especially in schools with vulnerable populations of children who struggle with literacy. The importance that children be taught spelling for reading is incontrovertible.
Sustaining nuggets of wisdom from notable scientists and researchers on the role of spelling for reading:

From Cognitive psychologist Dan Willingham, Raising Kids Who Read (2015):

Professor Willingham writes that good readers all read by matching what's on the page with spelling images in the brain. "...using word spellings to read requires very little attention, if any. You see it [the word on the page] in the same way you just see and recognize a dog." "As your child gains reading experience, there is a larger and larger set of words that he can read using the spelling, and so his reading becomes faster, smoother, and more accurate. That's called fluency."

From reading scientist and thought leader in the science of reading Professor Mark Seidenberg, Language at the Speed of Sigh: How We Read, Why So Many Can't, and What Can Be Done About It. (2017):
"In neuroimaging studies, poor readers show atypically low activity in a part of the brain that processes the spelling of words."

From Professors Gene Ouellette and Monique Sénéchal's landmark study in Developmental Psychology (2017):

"...spelling practice transfers to reading improvement in general; recent meta-analyses have shown that spelling instruction benefits word reading across the school years (Graham & Hebert, 2011), and also specifically in the elementary years (Graham & Santangelo, 2014). "

From renowned researcher, author, staff developer, and spelling advocate Professor Louisa Moats:

"As a general guide for covering the proposed content [a grade-by-grade spelling curriculum] about 15-20 minutes daily or 30 minutes three times per week should be allocated to spelling instruction. Application in writing should be varied and continual." (Moats, 2005/2006, p. 42-43).

And these are the tip of the iceberg!

There must be a reckoning among educators and publishers in order to advance equity and better literacy outcomes especially for vulnerable populations at risk for literacy failure including children of color, ELLs, the economically disadvantaged, and struggling readers at risk of learning disability who aren't receiving explicit spelling instruction. The following major reading programs are inadequate for teaching spelling in schools with vulnerable populations. Embrace the spelling-for-reading solution in 2021 by providing systematic, explicit, structured spelling instruction in a grade by grade curriculum.

An Education Week analysis of these programs "found many instances in which these programs diverge from evidence-based practices for teaching reading or supporting struggling students." (Swartz, 2019. p.1)

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Why Spelling Instruction Should Be Hot in 2021

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After decades of neglect due to flawed whole language theory, the importance of explicit spelling instruction for reading comprehension is finally getting due diligence in research, paving the way for a resurgence of teaching English spelling in today's classrooms. The spelling to read movement spotlights the importance of spelling for orthographic mapping and spelling's role in automatic word reading which drives reading comprehension.

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Annual Virtual Conference

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Where do I need to go to attend the conference?

The conference is completely online, so it is accessible from anywhere you have an internet access that allows for video streaming.

How long is the conference?

The conference is three weeks: April 5 - 23, 2021

Is there a fee for the conference?

Although we would love to offer it for free, it is quite expensive to host a conference (even online). So, unfortunately we do need to charge a fee. We do offer Early Bird rates each year. The bonus for you is that there are no travel costs!

Are the workshops live presentations?

There will be at least 11 prerecorded workshops. You will have access to all the workshops 24 hrs/day, 7 days/week for the duration of the conference to view any of the workshops.

There will be one live workshop, which is our Dyslexia for a Day Simulation. This is an interactive workshop. We will record the live presentation and post it on the conference site for those participants that were not able to attend the live session to view the recording anytime until the last day of the conference.

How long is each workshop?

Each workshop will be between 60-90 minutes long. How long an individual workshop is will be posted in the workshop's post, so you will know before you begin watching a workshop how long it will be. You can start and stop a video at anytime, so you don't need to completely view a workshop in one sitting.

Are the workshops accessible after the conference dates?

No. You will have access to the conference site for the duration of the conference only. You can view any workshop as many times as you would like until the last day of the conference.

Will there be handouts available?

You will be able to download from the conference site the handout version of presenter's presentations and any additional handouts a presenter provides.

Do you get a certificate for attending the conference?

A certificate of completion will be provided for each workshop a participant views and completes the workshop evaluation. The certificate will include the amount of time for the individual workshop.

Are there CEU's or other credits available?

We do provide a certificate of completion for each workshop. We also have partnerships with the following to offer credits/units:

University of San Diego - 1 - 1.5 graduate level extension credits. 1 credit - must view seven workshops and complete workshop evaluation, 1.5 credits - must view 10 workshops and complete workshop evaluations. For more information about the type of credits these are, Click here.

ALTA CEU's - ALTA credit will be provided for each workshop viewed and evaluation completed. (Up to 19 clock hour of CEH credit)

Do you accept purchase orders (POs)?

Yes! You can submit your PO by email to dyslexiaspec@gmail.com or fax to 619-517-0683

Do you give group discounts?

Yes! For groups of five or more. Please email us at dyslexiaspec@gmail.com for more information.

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Dyslexia Training Institute -Annual Virtual Conference

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Where do I need to go to attend the conference? The conference is completely online, so it is accessible from anywhere you have an internet access that allows for video streaming. How long is the conference? The conference is three weeks: April 5 - 23, 2021 Is there a fee for the conference?

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Yoshimoto Orton-Gillingham International - Literacy Training Consulting and Certification Metro Denver, Colorado

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We are a network of educators leading school district implementation of high-quality curriculum who have come together to share our learning so that other educators might benefit from our experience.
Meet the squad

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We are a network of educators leading school district implementation of high-quality curriculum who have come together to share our learning so that other educators might benefit from our experience. Meet the squad

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The Superkids Reading Program captivates students from the start with tales of the Superkids. These relatable characters and their ongoing adventures provide an engaging and cohesive framework for literacy success.

Superkids is a comprehensive English language arts curriculum crafted for grades K-2 using evidence-based literacy practices. This proven-effective program follows a unique systematic and explicit instructional path through engaging, increasingly complex text.

View Brochure

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The Superkids Reading Program | Zaner-Bloser

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The Superkids Reading Program is a comprehensive K-2 English language arts curriculum featuring the engaging Superkids characters. Learn more today!

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is a comprehensive K-8 English language arts curriculum crafted to help students build the knowledge and skills they need to be successful readers, exceptional writers, and effective communicators.

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Wit & Wisdom® - Elementary and Middle School ELA Curriculum

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Wit & Wisdom® is a K-8 English language arts (ELA) curriculum from Great Minds® that provides knowledge and skills to help students read, write, and communicate.

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Seinberg addresses her letter

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This post is available as a PDF.

Lucy Calkins has written a manifesto entitled "No One Gets To Own The Term 'Science Of Reading'". I am a scientist who studies reading. Her document is not about the science that I know; it is about Lucy Calkins. Dr. Calkins is a prolific pedagogical entrepreneur who has published numerous curricula and supporting materials for teaching reading and writing to children. She is among the most successful, influential reading educators in this country. According to an EdWeek survey published this week, hers is among the 5 most commonly used reading curricula in the country.

The purpose of the document is to protect her brand, her market share, and her standing among her many followers. Dr. Calkins is not interested in examining the educational implications of reading science. She is interested in co-opting the term so that the science cannot be used to discredit her products.

Dr. Calkins has reason to be feeling defensive. As everyone knows, our schools routinely fail at teaching large numbers of children to become skilled readers. The 2019 NAEP scores released in October were even worse than usual: reading scores declined in more than half the states; the black-white achievement gap didn't change because scores for both groups decreased in parallel. As on every round since 1992, fewer than half of 4th and 8th graders in the nationally-representative sample read above a basic level. The story is the same on the most recent data from the PISA, the big international reading assessment.

The educational establishment is complicit in these outcomes. Teachers are underprepared for a difficult job. They learn grossly out of date information about how reading works and how children learn, stories that are contradicted by basic research in cognitive science and neuroscience. They are encouraged to use ineffective practices that make it harder for children to become skilled readers, especially those at risk for other reasons such as poverty. This has been the situation for several decades. I documented this history in my book.

Many people-for example, the families of children who struggle with reading; teachers who don't buy the party line; citizens who are concerned about whether there are enough literate people to run a democracy, distinguish facts from "alternative facts", or save the planet-are fed up with the educational establishment's chronic stone-walling. They're angry, and they're organizing.

In response to pressure from grass-roots, parent-led organizations such as Decoding Dyslexia, legislation related to reading or dyslexia has been passed or is under consideration in over 40 states. Efforts have mainly focused on raising the bar on teacher qualifications via tougher licensure exams, and screening children at risk for reading difficulties in kindergarten or first grade.

Dr. Calkins may have been moved to act because legislators are beginning to take a critical look at commercial reading curricula. The elementary education market is enormous-about 15 million children in grades K-3 alone-and the products (teacher manuals, grade-level books tied to the curriculum, supplementary materials, support services, etc.) are glitzy, expensive systems marketed by edutech behemoths such as Pearson PLC (2018 revenues $4 billion) and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2018 revenues $1 billion). If these products incorporate and perpetuate discredited instructional practices, why should states keep buying them? (1)

The writing is on the wall in Arkansas, which passed legislation "to require that the curriculum, professional development, and graduate studies recommendations for a public school district and open-enrollment public charter school be in accordance with the science of reading; [and] to require that the department of education create an approved list of curriculum programs that are supported by the science of reading...." (2)

The list hasn't been compiled yet, but they have already announced that programs that use a method called the "three cueing systems model of reading or visual memory as the primary basis for teaching word recognition" will be disqualified. (3)

Today Arkansas, tomorrow the much larger markets in California, Texas, Florida, New York. Sensing which way the winds are blowing, Dr. Calkins has made a pre-emptory move to protect her franchise against the judgment that it contains discredited practices. If no one "owns the term 'science of reading,'" then her products can't be disqualified for failing to incorporate it.

This is just rhetorical bluster. No one "owns" the term, unless someone has trademarked it. The question is whether educators like Calkins understand the science well enough to use it to examine the validity of their beliefs about reading and act on its implications for instruction.
Lucy Calkins' Brand of Reading Science
In case her rhetorical ploy should fail, Dr. Calkins also argues that her approach is consistent with this science. She focuses on three hot-button topics:

1. Phonics. She's for it and always has been. "I, for one, have for decades stood strongly with advocates of reading science on their argument that phonics needs to be explicitly taught." Moreover, she thinks everyone else is also on board: "I do not know any school system that doesn't ascribe to the belief that explicit instruction in phonics is one of the foundations for learning to read and write."

2. 3-cueing approach. She's not in favor of it, and thinks others agree: "I do not know anyone, however, who defines his or her method for teaching reading as 'the three cueing systems.' That phrase is instead most associated with a form of reading assessment known as running records." And later: "[T]he three-cueing systems approach" is not, to my knowledge, a method of teaching reading...."

3. She recognizes dyslexia as a genuine condition that may require intervention that few teachers can provide. She acknowledges that many teachers would benefit from additional training related to phonics and dyslexia.

Calkins' recognition of dyslexia is a positive step, and she alludes to the unresolved problem: even if dyslexics are identified early enough to be helped the most, few educators have the training to provide adequate intervention. Dyslexia raises other difficult issues that I'll discuss in a future post.

With regard to phonics and 3-cueing, however, Dr. Calkins' arguments show how little of the relevant science she understands and validate the concern that her methods are out of touch with it. Her assertions about what does and does not happen in schools are risible.

Dr. Calkins asserts that she's pro phonics and anti 3-cueing but fails to recognize that she conceptualizes them the same way. Let's look. Her examples address what happens when a child is having difficulty reading a word. She says,

"The important thing, then, is to teach kids that they needn't freeze when they come to a hard word, nor skip past it. They needn't be stymied by the word and stop reading. The important thing is to teach them that they have resources to draw upon, and to use those resources to develop stamina. For example, they can look at the unfamiliar word and break it into parts and think, Have I seen that part before? and they can draw on their knowledge of letter-sound correspondence to decode. They also can reread the sentence and think, What could this be? and then check that hypothesis against the actual letters. If the word those kids encounter does happen to be horse, (to continue with the example) they can sound out the initial consonant /h/ and then proceed to either the /o/⁠-which has 16 sounds, so it's not easy!-or to the /or/ which will be a more useful chunk. Teaching kids to flexibly tackle hard words, looking for chunks, is important-a skill that kids get tons of practice with then they write."

Dr. Calkins has just described the process of identifying a word by combining cues. The cues can involve guessing what the meaning of the word might be in that context, looking at the word to see if it is familiar, looking for familiar parts of a word, or trying to figure out some of the sounds, but good luck with that because the letter o has 16 pronunciations. Dr. Calkins says she disdains 3-cueing, but the method is right there in her document.

The problem with this approach is that it is a slow, unreliable way to read words and an inefficient way to develop word recognition skill. Dr. Calkins treats word recognition as a reasoning problem-like solving a puzzle. She is dedicated to the educational precept that children learn best by discovering how systems work rather than being told. The process she describes is highly inefficient-the child has to generate the cues, combine the cues, generate a candidate word, evaluate whether it seems right, rinse and repeat-though she thinks it manageable if the child develops sufficient stamina.

Stamina? Skilled word recognition is like a reflex. When the eyes fixate on a word it triggers fast, automatic neural processes that yield recognition within a hundred milliseconds or so. You are aware of the result, understanding the word, but the underlying computations are subconscious. Fast, automatic recognition frees the reading brain to focus on other things, like comprehending the text. If word reading demands stamina, you're doing it wrong. That is the relevant science.

Efficient word recognition is accomplished by what Daniel Kahneman called "system one" thinking, the "fast" unconscious system. Dr. Calkins is treating it like a problem for "system two"-the slow, conscious one. This is a fundamental error.

Is using the slower, reasoning approach a good way to become a skilled reader? Absolutely not. Inferring the identity of a word from the cues Dr. Calkins emphasizes is really hard. (It takes stamina.) It's also fallible unless the child is already familiar with the text or the word occurs in an unusually predictable context ("I have five fingers on my hand.") Worse, Dr. Calkins ignores the fact that the child is also learning from their mistaken guesses. Our brains are continually updating as we engage in activities like reading. A child who is laboriously deducing the meaning of a word from unreliable cues is also learning mistaken associations from erroneous responses. This is truly how to make learning to read hard.

The most reliable cue to a word's identity is its pronunciation-if you know the correspondences between spelling and sound. A beginning reader who sounds out a word and says it aloud can recognize it if it is in their spoken word vocabulary. With appropriate instruction, children rapidly gain the ability to generate the sound of the word in their mind's ear-without pronouncing it aloud. This mental code is called "phonology". It doesn't require moving your lips. (4)

Educators like Calkins discourage relying on phonology-it's usually the last cue they mention-because the English writing system is said to be so complex: all those pronunciations of the letter o, for example. In fact the system is far more consistent than advertised. In the horse example, the fact that o has many pronunciations in isolation is irrelevant because readers don't generate phonological codes letter by letter. The pronunciation of OR is very consistent ( short, cord, torn etc.), and so is HOR ( horse, horn, shorn, horde). The system seems inconsistent because of pairs like horse-worse, but worse is part of a different pattern, conditioned by the initial w: worse, worst, word, world etc. Children pick up these patterns with adequate instruction and experience.

So, when Dr. Calkins says she does not know of anyone who relies on the "3-cuing method", she is playing a terminological game, describing the strategy without using the term. Just changing the name might be one way to defeat Arkansas-type legislation.

Dr. Calkins has preached this stamina approach to word reading for years. Here is a version from her 2001 opus "The Art of Teaching Reading":

"It's important to show children that we solve words by relying on a range of flexible strategies. First we rely on meaning: "the boy rode (something) to the city." We know that the problematic word is some kind of transportation. Next we usually try to recognize the word or parts of the word. Later in this chapter I'll show ways in which we help children use spelling patterns of word chunks as they read and write. For now, it is enough to say that if we don't have a visual memory for the word, we often have it for a chunk of the word (in train we've seen rain, in routine we've seen tine). It is important for a reader to as "what do I know that can help me with this word." We also rely on our knowledge of the meanings of words (electric, electricity, and electrician are spelled similarly despite their differences in sounds because of their shared meaning base). The English language is not phonemically regular; an overreliance on phonics is a common trademark of poor spellers and word solvers [readers]. Phonetic spellers may spell action as aksion and always and allways."

This is, again, the multiple-cuing idea par excellence. This particular example is helpful because it illustrates that "cues" are often unreliable or misleading. Consider "The boy who rode (something) to the city". Inferring something about the meaning of the (something) word only works if the child has read and understood the rest of the words. Reading research since the 1980s has shown that weaker readers (not the stronger ones) rely more on the context to guess words they can't read, which is ineffective because they are also poor at reading the context words. The boy could also have ridden excitedly to the city, and in less contrived examples the range of options is even larger.

Dr. Calkins then recommends the strategy of looking for common components of words that are spelled similarly. Electric-electricity-electrician overlap in meaning. But she also recommends applying this strategy to words like rain and train, which are semantically unrelated. Looking for the rain in train is relevant if the child is trying to sound out the words, but Dr. Calkins doesn't mention that or recommend it. Looking for the shared meanings of train and rain is an opportunity to learn false associations between them.

In her examples, Dr. Calkins functions as an oracle who knows which dimensions of words are relevant cues in which cases, but the child would have to know vastly more about the structure of the language-about as much as she does-to do the same.

Looking for the shared meanings of similarly-spelled words is also an unreliable strategy. The electric words share meaning because they are morphologically related: they are derived from the same base morpheme electric. However, English morphology is even less consistent than the spelling-sound system. A teacher teaches and a baker bakes but a number doesn't numb and there's no butt in butter. Nor for that matter is there spin in spinach, corn in corner, or liver in deliver, and sweetbreads are neither sweet nor bread. These are all cases in which a spelling pattern functions as a morpheme in some words but not others, and English is full of them. Searching for the shared meanings of words often leads the reader way off course.

Dr. Calkins claims to have supported phonics for decades, but not in "The Art of Teaching Reading." The book is 580 pages long. Phonics is discussed on 6 pages, most of which consists of extended anecdotes of trite examples such as children noticing that several of their names begin with /j/, examining features of the word JACOB, and discovering that two words contain the sound /at/. Her one substantive comment about it is the observation that English is not phonemically regular and that overreliance on phonics is common among poor readers and spellers. Nothing here about how one would actually teach phonics efficiently.

Referring to her commitment to phonics, Dr. Calkins says:

"It is equally important that children use phonics to read, which means that when they come to a sentence that says "I got on my horse and rode away," and the child first reads pony for horse, the child should be told, "Check the letters," or "Try that again," or asked, "Does that look right?" It is not helpful for teachers to accept pony for horse nor for them to say, "Skip the hard words," or "Just guess and keep going." Figuring out unfamiliar words gives kids opportunities to apply the knowledge they are learning during phonics as they read."

Whoa. A child who misreads horse as pony does not need to check the letters or decide if it looks right. That child needs to stop guessing and learn to decode words. A semantic substitution error like horse read as pony occurs when the child is guessing based on "cues". Such errors also occur in some types of brain-injured patients whose reading networks have been severely damaged (they are called semantic paralexias). They are not characteristic of normal reading, and it is disturbing that Dr. Calkins treats them as though they were. It's here that I question whether Dr. Calkins is as committed to phonics as she avers.

Dr. Calkins says it's not OK to skip the hard words or just guess and keep going, but it is a common instructional practice, as many parents can attest. That may be because teachers are listening to a different pedagogical authority, Kenneth Goodman, who invented the discredited "psycholinguistic guessing game" theory of reading and maintains to this day that guessing is fine even if the child guesses wrong. (As he says in Emily Hanford's excellent podcast/documentary here.)

It is obvious that reading words accurately and fluently matters. For beginning readers and skilled readers. For success in school and at work. For personal health and safety. For science. It takes a deep immersion in educational ideology to believe otherwise. The reading strategies and pedagogical practices that Calkins, Goodman, and many others in the educational establishment support make it harder to gain this foundational skill.
The Take-Away
Dr. Calkins' attempt to wrap her work in the mantle of science fails because she has yet to absorb basic findings that contradict tenets of her approach. Her document is full of contradictions. She says supports phonics but also decries the "hype about phonics" and disparages unnamed critics as "phonics-centric" advocates of "phonics at the expense of everything else." As I have written elsewhere,

"The overwhelming evidence demonstrating the importance of phonology in reading does not in any way entail, nor should it be taken to imply, that phonics instruction is all that is involved. Every rational account of learning to read includes it as one of several components, necessary but not sufficient."

Dr. Calkins derides the 3-cueing approach but the concept is deeply embedded in her erroneous view of how reading works and children learn, as her document confirms.

It's obvious that other curriculum publishers and authors will follow Dr. Calkins' lead in claiming that their products are compatible with the science of reading. For a while now there has been pressure to show that the materials are "evidence-based," but the term has little meaning because educators have their own concept of what counts as evidence. Soon they will all claim to be consistent with the "science of reading" and it will be equally meaningless unless people look beyond the label at the assumptions about reading and learning the materials incorporate and the methods they employ.

WIll these observations have any impact on Dr. Calkins' dedicated followers, who have reponded to her piece with fervant expressions of gratitude and support on social media?

Let's see: a charismatic leader with extraordinary self-marketing skills develops a base of fiercely loyal followers. The person gets called on the accuracy of what they have said. For the followers, identification with the leader is more important than the truth. Why, a person could kill a kid's interest in reading in the middle of Fifth Avenue and the followers would blame the kid's lack of stamina.
Footnotes

1. Calkins' products are marketed by Heinemann, for many years the go-to source for Whole Language instructional materials. Until recently Heinemann was owned by Pearson, the edutech behemoth, but Pearson has recently exited the US K-12 business and now it's owned by a private equity firm.

2. Arkansas passed a "Right to Read" act in 2017, which focuses on teacher qualifications (they will have to demonstrate "proficiency or awareness in scientific reading instruction"). The 2019 act is an extension that focuses on acceptable curricula and instructional practices.

3. The three-cueing approach refers to teaching children to identify words by combining multiple"cues". Cues could include the pictures in a book, words in the sentence context, knowledge about the topic, the first letter or two of a word, and others. It's very popular. I demolished it in my book, pp. 300-304.

4. Dr. Calkins' use of the term "phonics" differs from convention. She writes:

"Whereas typically developing children come to school having already learned three major language systems-meaning (semantics), sentence structure (syntax) and sound (phonics), they do not know [the written code]."

Phonics refers to instruction about the connections between print and sound. Children do not come to school knowing "phonics." Having learned a spoken language they know about phonological properties of words-how they are pronounced and sound.

Later she says, " We are clear that children should not just study phonics, they should also use phonics every day, often." And also, "It is equally important that children use phonics to read...." Again, these are non sequiturs. Teachers might use phonics instruction, but children use what they have learned, which are spelling-sound correspondences.

Whereas Dr. Calkins rejects the term 3-cueing but employs the method, here she adopts the term "phonics" but not the method.

Note: I thank Emily Hanford and Maryellen MacDonald for very helpful discussions. They hold no responsibility for the content of this document and any errors are my own.

permalink: https://seidenbergreading.net/2019/12/06/lucy-calkins-on-the-attack/

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This is why we don't have better readers: Response to Lucy Calkins

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This post is available as a PDF. Lucy Calkins has written a manifesto entitled "No One Gets To Own The Term 'Science Of Reading'". I am a scientist who studies reading. Her document is not about the science that I know; it is about Lucy Calkins.

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What is Reading Recovery?

Reading Recovery (RR) is a one-to-one reading intervention for six- to seven-year-olds. It is based on a 'constructivist' belief that reading is a natural, meaning-making process, akin to learning to speak, of which phonics and decoding are only an incidental aspect. Early readers are encouraged to make use of a 'multi-cueing' system, wherein they are taught to process the semantic, syntactic and visual information in highly predictable and repetitive (mostly narrative) texts, in order to able to read with increased fluency. The text is often 'speech-like' and words are often remembered as whole units. In practice, if readers can't process particular words, they are most often directed away from the grapho-phonic information. Instead, they are prompted to look at the corresponding picture, to consider, "What would make sense here?", to look at the first letter of a word and 'strategically reason' what the word could be, to think about what is happening in the sentence or narrative or about how the character is feeling, and so on. The above instruction in attending to 'meaning, structure and visual' (MSV) elements is made explicit to learners and is used in preference to them being systematically and explicitly taught sound-letter correspondence. The latter is regarded as essential for writing, but not for reading.

There is, in fact, a paucity of quality evidence supporting RR. The National Clearing House in the US found that only three studies out of 202 were sufficiently well-constructed to be included in their resource base. Those three (with a total of 227 students) all showed short-term benefits, but did not measure long-term effects. As a NSW-based teacher, this author is familiar with, and shall summarise below, a quality NSW study published in 2015 by the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CESE) part of the NSW Department of Education (NSWDoE). This study was a longitudinal evaluation of the reading progress of thousands of children - one group treated by RR and another cohort matched for achievement and socio-economic status but not treated by RR.

The table below, from the CESE evaluation, summarises the relatively poor reading performance of the cohort treated by Reading Recovery.

Cognitive load theory and Reading Recovery

Which tenets of cognitive load theory (CLT) could explain this failure?

Biologically primary and biologically secondary learning

Beginning reading is problem solving. CLT has pointed out - and in fact owes its genesis to the observation - that solving a problem does not necessarily lead to learning. Problem solving is a biologically primary skill. Humans are primed to use means-end analysis, a generalised attempt to reduce the difference between goal states (e.g., finishing and understanding a simple book, reading and understanding a simple word or sentence) and present states (e.g., seeing a series of squiggles on a page). A means-end analysis approach to problem-solving means that learning may not occur if the learning goal is to solve the problem itself (reading and understanding the text), rather than to enhance long-term memory storage about how to solve that problem (learning how to decode written text).

Element interactivity/isolated elements effect

Requiring beginning readers to simultaneously consider diverse elements of language (semantic, syntactic, contextual, grapho-phonic) in order to 'read' words imposes a heavy cognitive load, as readers then have to process these elements simultaneously in working memory. Conversely, beginning reading instruction is more successful when element interactivity is kept low, i.e., by only requiring readers to consider one element at a time when word reading - primarily the grapho-phonic information. Word recognition needs to quickly become a low-cognitive-demand skill - stored in long-term memory and accessed automatically. The acquisition of such skills should not be over-complicated by using working memory for other purposes more than is necessary.

Intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load

Learning to read necessarily comes with a high intrinsic cognitive load; that is to say, the process of deciphering an alphabetic code to automaticity is long and daunting. A greater than desirable extraneous load is placed upon RR pupils, who are subject to instructional procedures which overload working memory and withhold important information. Start trying to learn to read Russian, Hindi, Thai, Chinese etc. without being given sufficient information about what the symbols mean and you will walk in the shoes of a RR student.

Learning science or an educational flat-earth?

Unfortunately, the above reading pedagogy has become dominant in the early years of school in most anglophone countries, leading to high levels of unnecessary reading failure. Even where teachers do not receive Reading Recovery training, they too often learn to teach reading as a multi-cueing guessing game, sometimes through whole-class offshoots like Language, Literacy and Learning (L3) in NSW.

Cognitive load theory is an important contribution to the scientific framework which can account for both the failure of Reading Recovery-based pedagogy and the greater efficacy of phonics-based reading instruction for beginning/struggling readers.

1. The quote "Look at the picture" from this article's title comes from a common prompt given to RR pupils, and also to their common response when asked what they should do if they can't read the word.

2. The NSWDoE evaluation was the first and only time they had attempted to determine the value of the tens of millions of dollars spent every year for decades on RR. The NSWDoE, to its credit, accepted the evidence and stopped centrally funding the program, although still permits schools to spend taxpayer funds on RR if they so choose. How many (or few) RR teachers in NSW have read this evaluation, much less accepted its findings?

3. Reading Recovery spawned a whole-class offshoot, Language, Literacy and Learning (L3) in NSW, where all students in a class/school are treated with a RR methodology. Until very recently, this approach was generously funded, despite having no evidentiary basis.

N.B. Many thanks to Professor John Sweller (UNSW) for his helpful feedback on, and improvements to, this article.

Ian Milligan (@IanMilligan5) is a Nationally Certified Highly Accomplished Teacher from NSW, Australia, currently working as a K-2 Mentor at Granville Public School, a low-SES, high-refugee population, suburban Sydney primary school, where reading failure has significantly declined in recent years.

This article appeared in the December 2020 edition of .

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"Look at the picture": cognitive load theory and Reading Recovery

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Using cognitive load theory, this article seeks to explain the failure of Reading Recovery as an effective instructional technique. By Ian Milligan Download PDF What is Reading Recovery? Reading Recovery (RR) is a one-to-one reading intervention for six- to seven-year-olds.

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As reliable as flipping a coin.

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The availability of psychometrically sound and usable universal screeners is a key component to successful early identification within a response-to-intervention model. The purpose of this study was to compare the diagnostic accuracy of oral reading fluency (ORF) and an informal reading inventory for identifying students considered at risk for failing a district-wide assessment. Participants included 968 students in 2nd and 3rd grade in a rural elementary school district in Minnesota. Results showed significant correlations between ORF and informal reading inventory data and between each potential screener and the criterion measure at 2nd and 3rd grades. However, ORF demonstrated higher diagnostic accuracy for correctly identifying at-risk students and resulted in 80% correct classification compared to 54% for the reading inventory data. We discuss implications for practice and directions for future research.

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Two better understand how teaching kindergarten students too much information contributes to off-task behavior.

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(PDF) A Brief Report of the Diagnostic Accuracy of Oral Reading Fluency and Reading Inventory Levels for Reading Failure Risk Among Second- and Third-Grade Students

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The availability of psychometrically sound and usable universal screeners is a key component to successful early identification within a response-to-intervention model. The purpose of this study was to compare the diagnostic accuracy of oral reading fluency (ORF) and an informal reading inventory for identifying students considered at risk for failing a district-wide assessment.

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Boston Children's hospital

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Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience: linking neuroscience and education Gaab lab @ HGSE Learn More

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Early Bird

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EarlyBird helps educators identify children at risk for reading difficulties, like dyslexia, at a time when intervention is most effective.

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Dyslexia screeners

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Create a new spreadsheet and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Sheets to edit Excel files. Free from Google.

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Screeners and tool chart

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https://www.berkeleyside.org/2021/07/30/berkeley-unified-school-district-lawsuit-settlement-agreement-reading-dyslexia-services

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The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California will hold a hearing for the case on Nov. 4 to finalize the settlement. Credit: Shutterstock

Berkeley Unified School District has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit claiming that district failed to identify students with reading disorders and provide necessary accommodations for them. Under the terms of the proposed settlement agreement, Berkeley schools will need to offer universal screening for reading disorders and implement new programs for teaching reading. The changes will be implemented over the next three years.

"I have represented individual students in BUSD who struggled to learn to read and came to believe there were systemic issues within BUSD's existing programs that could not be solved on a case-by-case basis," said Deborah Jacobson, an attorney with Jacobson Education Law who represented four students and their parents in the case.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in 2017, claimed that Berkeley Unified did not identify the needs of students with reading disorders, including dyslexia, and then did not provide adequate services for those students.

After more than four years of litigation, both parties reached an agreement in January 2021, which the court preliminarily approved July 8. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California will hold a hearing for the case Nov. 4 to finalize the settlement.

Under the proposed settlement agreement, Berkeley Unified will implement a universal screening program for students with suspected reading disorders, adopt new reading intervention programs and use a new model for identifying students for special education. All these changes will be accompanied by professional development for staff, supported by nationally recognized consultants and monitored by quarterly reports to the school board. (Berkeley Unified has also agreed to pay $350,000 in attorney's fees.)

"This is going to be a big, wide-scale change for the district," said Malhar Shah, a special education attorney for Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund representing the students in the case. "It means that students with reading disabilities will graduate high school and be ready to move on to the next step in terms of writing, reading, literacy skills. It's an exciting prospect."

While the district has agreed to implement these interventions, it continues to "deny that there is any factual or legal basis for Plaintiff's claims" that the district has violated state or federal law in serving students with reading disabilities, according to the agreement. Superintendent Brent Stephens said he believes these changes will result in "improvements for reading instruction in Berkeley Unified."

Both parties decided to settle the case to "avoid the expense and uncertainties" of continued litigation, according to the proposed settlement.

A new way of teaching reading

Research shows that identifying potential reading disabilities early is key to effective intervention and academic success throughout high school.

"If a child is not reading at grade level in fourth grade, their educational house is on fire," said Cheryl Theis, an advocate with the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund. Theis was not involved with the lawsuit.

Students who don't receive support early on "suffer from low self-esteem, anxiety and depression. A lot of them just give up on school," said Lori DePole, co-director of Decoding Dyslexia California, a volunteer-led grassroots organization advocating for students with dyslexia.

With the district's new universal screening plan, all students in kindergarten through 2nd grade will take a diagnostic test called DIBELS twice a year that identifies those at risk for reading disorders. DePole hopes this is a precursor for changes to come at the state level. Senate Bill 237, which would require California schools to implement universal dyslexia screening by 2022, passed unanimously in the Senate in June but has not reached the Assembly yet.

In addition, under the new Literacy Improvement Program outlined in the settlement, the district will implement a program called FastTrack Phonics for teaching reading to all students. (Stephens said the district already began using FastTrack two years ago). For students in need of interventions, the district will implement Wilson Reading Systems or Slingerland, both of which are in line with standards set by the International Dyslexia Association.

"We haven't been teaching kids to read explicitly. That's the problem," said Kareem Weaver, who sits on the education committee for the Oakland branch of the NAACP. He said these changes mean more support for struggling readers.

"Once implemented, the Literacy Improvement Program promises a more sustainable, accessible, and equitable solution for all students who struggle to learn to read in the BUSD," Jacobson said.

The settlement also prohibits the district from using its current intervention programs, including Reading Recovery, for students with suspected reading disabilities, except in special circumstances.

Maria, whose name has been changed to protect her anonymity, said she spent the better part of last year pushing for the school district to evaluate her third-grade son for a reading disorder and provide the support he needed. Herson now has an IEP with accommodations for dyslexia and dysgraphia, but she hopes the settlement will benefit parents who don't have the resources to fight tooth and nail for their kids' education.

"I know that there are many other children whose parents aren't as persistent and as squeaky of a wheel as I am," Maria said.

"My hope about the settlement is that it will deal with these equity issues of who gets help and who doesn't," Theis said.

Superintendent Stephens said the universal screener is a "neutral" test that he expects will identify "roughly a proportionate number of students as having some kind of phonological processing issue in each of our demographic categories." Black students are currently over-represented in Berkeley's special education program - they made up 14% of BUSD's student population in 2020-21 but 27% of students with IEPs- but Stephens said the universal screener should not exacerbate the disparity.

"Black kids are overrepresented for behavioral disorders. They are not over-represented for dyslexia," said Weaver, who also leads a Bay Area nonprofit supporting reading initiatives called Fulcrum.Weaver said this settlement means more targeted academic support for all readers.

Beyond Berkeley

Advocates say the lack of support for students with dyslexia is a problem across the state. With this settlement, they hope that other districts will feel compelled to implement similar interventions.

"Districts are going to get a wake up call," Weaver said. "This means that people aren't going to keep playing patty cake with the districts."

Still, the proposed settlement agreement is not a guarantee of adequate services. Implementing a plan is different from writing it out on paper, and it will take time for teachers to learn how to teach a new reading curriculum, especially when it strays from what they were taught in teacher's college.

"[The settlement] is not going to help you win hearts and minds. People believe what they believe and they're going to do what they're going to do," Weaver said. "That comes from leadership. That comes from change management. That comes from the superintendent, school board and chief academic officers actually making the case [for this reading model] to their teachers, to their parents, to their principals."

Maria is "cautiously optimistic" that the settlement will make a big difference for students with suspected or existing reading disorders, but she acknowledges that the burden teachers have to bear in learning a new instructional model is significant.

"We keep on putting these mandates on these teachers and we never take anything away," Maria said. "They're being put in a tough spot with this new curriculum and new literacy action plan."

Maria's own son now has reading disorder interventions outlined in his IEP. But she doesn't know how long it will take before the district can adequately meet his needs, even once the proposed settlement is finalized.

"They haven't met those legal obligations yet, and I don't know if they will be capable of doing so," she said.
Correction: Senate Bill 237 passed unanimously in June, but only in the Senate. It has not yet reached the Assembly.
Ally Markovich covers education for Berkeleyside.

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Berkeley Unified will settle suit claiming it failed students with reading disorders

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Berkeley Unified School District has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit claiming that district failed to identify students with reading disorders and provide necessary accommodations for them. Under the terms of the proposed settlement agreement, Berkeley schools will need to offer universal screening for reading disorders and implement new programs for teaching reading.

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They have some shared symptoms, but dyslexia and ADHD are separate conditions. Here's how to to tell them apart and tips for managing these conditions.

Dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are two neurological conditions that can make learning more difficult.

The former affects 11%, and the latter affects between 5 to 20%, but it's difficult to estimate precisely.

Sometimes, the symptoms of ADHD and dyslexia can be hard to tell apart - as both can cause trouble with reading and writing. But even though the symptoms can appear similar, the underlying reasons for the symptoms are very different.

What is dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a condition that impacts your ability to use language. You may have trouble matching letters to sounds or recognizing the sounds in words. This can make it hard to read and understand what you're reading.

Dyslexia can also make spelling, writing, or math more difficult.

What is ADHD?

ADHD is a condition that affects your executive functioning skills, which include working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. This can make it hard for you to manage your daily responsibilities.

ADHD can also impact your ability to focus in the classroom or on your work. ADHD can also make it difficult to handle your emotions. People with ADHD can be hyperactive or impulsive.

You can learn more about ADHD symptoms here.

How are dyslexia and ADHD similar?

Dyslexia and ADHD have several similarities, such as:

Both conditions can be genetic. Between of people inherit dyslexia, and about of people inherit ADHD.

Both disorders can make it more difficult to learn how to read or organize your thoughts when writing.

ADHD and dyslexia can make paying attention hard.

They can contribute to difficulties when when communicating with others.

Both allow you to be more creative in your thinking and artistic abilities.

How are they different?

Even with those similarities, the two conditions are actually very different.

Reading. Dyslexia can make it more difficult to read because it impacts your ability to use language, while ADHD impacts your ability to focus.

Writing. Dyslexia can make it more challenging to write because skills like spelling and grammar are impacted. ADHD impacts your ability to organize your thoughts and pay attention to details.

Life. Dyslexia may cause people to struggle with reading and understanding tests, filling out forms, and planning. ADHD often has wider impacts on daily life, and may cause you to be late to appointments, miss deadlines, and have difficulty managing money.

"There's a lot of crossover between kids with dyslexia and kids with attention issues," says Chris Bogart, a child and adolescent psychologist and co-executive director of the Sasco River Center in Connecticut.

"Dyslexia is a disorder that impacts how three different parts of the brain are wired together. Typically, there's a track that connects the auditory, visual, and language parts of the brain together, which allows a person to become a fluent reader," Bogart explains.

For people with dyslexia, however, there's a disruption between those pathways. As a result, the brain creates an "alternate and much less efficient pathway through the frontal lobe to process reading material," he says.

Though this different brain process might make reading fluidly more difficult, people with dyslexia can still learn how to read.

As far as dyslexia's connection with ADHD, Bogart notes that "ADHD is a disorder of the frontal lobe, and if some of the frontal lobe structures are being used to read, then the frontal lobe is overtaxed. This can affect a person's ability to focus."

Bogart also explains that re-wiring can also reduce a person's stamina.

A person with dyslexia must often work much harder to read and use their language skills than a neurotypical person. Eventually, they "run out of steam," making it difficult for them to sustain their focus.

In his practice, Bogart has found that sometimes, as a child's reading skills improve, the ADHD symptoms decrease or disappear.

"There's a lot of thinking out there that some of the kids who are diagnosed with both disorders may not truly have ADHD," he says.

Managing both a child's struggle to read and the symptoms of ADHD can be challenging, but it is possible. For this, Bogart offered several tips you might find useful.

Break it down into small, manageable pieces

If your child's teacher asks them to read for 30 minutes every night, that doesn't mean they need to read for 30 consecutive minutes. Instead, you could work with them for 5 minutes, then take a break to do something active for 5 minutes.

"I've found that for many kids with dyslexia and ADHD, as long as we're able to turn the learning into manageable, bite-sized pieces, and you're able to get them up and moving, you can get through it," says Bogart. "You need to make it fun for them."

Turn everyday life into learning experiences

If you're at a red light and notice a billboard or other sign, use the opportunity to decode the words together. You can do the same thing while waiting in line at the supermarket or any store. You can even turn it into a fun game.

"The more you can work some of those learning moments into natural day-to-day existence, the better," he says. "When you don't have to climb Mount Everest every time they read, you're going to make much more headway."

Find their superpower and help them embrace it

Bogart says that many people with dyslexia or ADHD are very artistic and creative. When one area of their life is a struggle, doing something they enjoy and are good at can bring them a sense of joy and improve their self-confidence and self-esteem.

"Make sure that you're balancing things out," Bogart advises. "If you're asking them to do some heavy lifting when it comes to reading, let them do something enjoyable as well."

Become a strong advocate for your child

"There's nothing more important than making sure your child receives a scientifically researched-based intervention," says Bogart.

"The difference between a student who gets really good instruction using scientific methods versus the student who just gets reading lessons can be huge."

Become knowledgeable about the research and learn some basics that you can reinforce at home in your reading lessons. Simply sitting with your child and having them labor through it without understanding how to help them is like spinning a wheel and just digging a bigger ditch.

"You want to keep them from getting frustrated because once they get frustrated, they're going to shut down," Bogart says.

Support their ADHD symptoms during learning

"A person with ADHD has a relatively low tolerance for things that are not interesting, or they don't believe are worthwhile," Bogart says.

"So, if the instruction doesn't have any traction, and they don't feel like they're getting anything out of it, then their ADHD is going to kick in to a much greater degree."

In addition to the 5-minute work periods, you can take a break as soon you have some success so they have a few minutes to bask in their achievement.

Bogart also suggests using sensory supports during learning sessions to have continual fine motor movement, which can help them focus. This could include clay, fidgets, or other items they can manipulate with their hands.

ADHD and dyslexia can go hand in hand. Though it may seem overwhelming when your child receives their initial diagnosis, your child can learn to live a fruitful life, especially with the right tools and support.

You can support your child by ensuring they receive scientifically researched-based interventions and learning how to help them at home. When you can make learning fun, they're more likely to succeed.

To continue your journey and learn more about ADHD and dyslexia, you can explore these resources:

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Dyslexia and ADHD: Similarities, Differences, and Tips for Managing

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They have some shared symptoms, but dyslexia and ADHD are separate conditions. Here's how to to tell them apart and tips for managing these conditions. Dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are two neurological conditions that can make learning more difficult.

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Volume 9, Issue 1
February 2020
With a nod to Hollis Scarborough's famous "Reading Rope," Joan Sedita has created the "Writing Rope." In Sedita's words, " ... significant attention is paid to the multi-component nature of skilled reading, while writing tends to be referred to as a single, monolithic skill. I'd like to suggest a model that identifies the multiple components that are necessary for skilled writing-a similar 'rope' metaphor can be used to depict the many strands that contribute to fluent, skilled writing. It should be noted that instruction for many skills that support writing also support reading comprehension."

For a deeper dive, see Sedita's explanation.
Copyright © 2020 International Dyslexia Association (IDA). Opinions expressed in the Examiner and/or via links do not necessarily reflect those of IDA. We encourage sharing of Examiner articles. If portions are cited, please make appropriate reference. Articles may not be reprinted for the purpose of resale. Permission to republish this article is available from info@dyslexiaIDA.org

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Joan Sedita's "Writing Rope" - International Dyslexia Association

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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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West Contra Costa school changes curriculum

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West Contra Costa school changes curriculum

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How one California elementary school sees success after overhauling its reading program

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Nystrom Elementary ditched a popular, yet criticized curriculum and put a greater focus on phonics to improve students’ reading skills.

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Senior Producer and Correspondent

Emily Hanford has been working in public media for more than two decades as a reporter, producer, editor, news director and program host. Her work has won numerous honors including a duPont-Columbia University Award and a Casey Medal. In 2017, she won the Excellence in Media Reporting on Education Research Award from the American Educational Research Association. Her groundbreaking podcast episode Hard Words, on why children aren't being taught to read, was a winner of the inaugural Public Service award from EWA in 2019. Emily is a member of the EWA Journalist Advisory Board and a longtime mentor for EWA's "new to the beat" program. She is a frequent speaker and moderator. Emily is based in the Washington, D.C. area. She is a graduate of Amherst College.

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Emily Hanford has been working in public media for more than two decades as a reporter, producer, editor, news director and program host. Her work has won numerous honors including a duPont-Columbia University Award and a Casey Medal. In 2017, she won the Excellence in Media Reporting on Education Research Award from the American Educational Research Association.

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Science of Reading: The Podcast, hosted by Susan Lambert, delivers the latest insights from researchers and practitioners in early reading. Listen today!

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Melissa and Lori Love Literacy Podcast. Click to read Literacy Lovers Newsletter, by Melissa & Lori Love Literacy, a Substack publication with thousands of readers.

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*Stephanie Stollar's "An Introduction to the Science of Reading"

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*Stephanie Stollar's "An Introduction to the Science of Reading"

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Introduction to the Science of Reading

Thanks to the input of over 100 educators, this presentation is now available free for you to use to introduce others to better reading outcomes.

Watch the presentation, then grab the files below and make it your own!

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Thanks to the input of over 100 educators, this presentation is now available free for you to use to introduce others to better reading outcomes. Watch the presentation, then grab the files below and make it your own!

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*The Reading League's Science of Reading video series

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*The Reading League's Science of Reading video series

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The Reading League's mission is to advance the awareness, understanding, and use of evidence-aligned reading instruction. We advance our mission by collaborating with schools to plan and enact long-term professional development initiatives, publishing a peer-reviewed practitioner , and holding an Annual Conference. The Reading League works to translate key findings from the science of reading into useful knowledge and skills that educators can apply in their classrooms.

Read our complete Position Statement on the Science of Reading.

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The Science of Reading aims to build a community of diverse stakeholders to empower educators to better support learners.

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*Education Week "How Do Kids Learn to Read? What the Science Say

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*Education Week "How Do Kids Learn to Read? What the Science Say

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Introduction to the Science of Reading

Thanks to the input of over 100 educators, this presentation is now available free for you to use to introduce others to better reading outcomes.

Watch the presentation, then grab the files below and make it your own!

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Thanks to the input of over 100 educators, this presentation is now available free for you to use to introduce others to better reading outcomes. Watch the presentation, then grab the files below and make it your own!

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The PAF Reading program is an effective program for teaching beginning reading using multisensory techniques supported by scientific research. PAF incorporates reading, spelling, and handwriting instruction into unified lessons that benefit all children, and can prevent reading failure in at-risk children. In over forty years of use, thousands of children have learned to read thanks to PAF!

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PAF Program | A Multisensory Orton-Gillingham Based Reading Program

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The PAF Reading program is an effective program for teaching beginning reading using multisensory techniques supported by scientific research. PAF incorporates reading, spelling, and handwriting instruction into unified lessons that benefit all children, and can prevent reading failure in at-risk children. In over forty years of use, thousands of children have learned to read thanks to PAF!

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I still look back with embarrassment about how my instructional approach may have set my students, who were predominantly English learners, on a path of lifelong difficulty with reading.

Back in 2009, as a brand-new kindergarten teacher, I faced an inevitable and impossible task. Like countless other educators across the country before and since, I was forced to cobble together instructional resources without a formal reading curriculum. Little did I know that one of the most trusted reading resources I embraced in those days was based on a flawed, privileged premise of how children best learn to read.

One of my veteran teacher colleagues offered me a hand-me-down copy of Lucy Calkins' "Units of Study for Teaching Reading." Calkins' instructional units promote what we now call the "balanced literacy" approach to teaching reading. This approach became wildly popular, in part because it appeals to the sentiments of white women like me-politically progressive and deeply engaged in education.

A central premise of balanced literacy is that children first learn to read by loving reading, and that the way to get children to love reading is to engage with lots of books. This idea is not entirely wrong, but it leaves out a key aspect of the process of learning to read: learning to match letters and sounds to "crack the code" of written language. Unfortunately, many proponents of balanced literacy still cling to a disproven theory of how children learn to read, one that de-emphasizes understanding the relationship between sounds and letters.

Calkins learned about reading from another blockbuster professor, Gay Su Pinnell, who is a champion of balanced literacy. Her ideas about writing were a good match with Calkins' ideas about writing, which were formed in England during the country's heady days of progressive education in the 1970s.

Teachers Were 'Sold a Story' Shot Through with Privilege

As journalist Emily Hanford brilliantly observes in her podcast, "," Calkins published a 1985 book about writing in which she asserted that eager, curious children would discover language conventions like spelling and punctuation from words in real life, from billboards to "the monogram letters on their bath towels."

It's an assertion that is sentimental, idyllic, and steeped in privilege-including a particular privilege held by those of us who were once little white girls, regardless of family wealth, who were successful in school and lauded by our teachers as being good readers.

Many of us, whether teachers like me or journalists like Hanford, learned to read easily and found joy in the experience. That means we don't intuitively know what other people need to become good readers.

A vision of balanced literacy-with a balance heavy on exposure to books but light and haphazard on instruction in code-cracking-fits our model of childhood as a time of magical exploration. To many teachers, it's a much more attractive vision than what they imagine is necessary to directly teach cracking the code: "drill-and-kill" worksheets, and scripted lessons. (It's entirely possible to teach phonics without boring children, but not everyone knows this.)

The idea that reading is a "natural" process parallels the worldview that leads many white women (and other people) to buy non-GMO foods despite not really understanding what that means or the dubious science behind it. It's the same philosophy that undergirds many educational movements rooted in children "discovering" learning as opposed to being directly taught concepts in a structured, systematic way.

While this approach works for some children, it leaves a much larger proportion of children adrift and floundering.

These children come from all socio-economic backgrounds, but the impacts are particularly pernicious for low-income kids. As Hanford notes, many affluent children are shortchanged educationally by a lack of attention to reading fundamentals; but some of them may be more likely to escape notice because they have parents who can afford the time and money to supplement what their children are learning in school, either through their own efforts or through tutoring.

When teachers want to share their love of reading, but don't explicitly show young children how to decode text, then provide increasingly complex text coupled with strong instruction in academic content and comprehension, their well-meaning efforts produce exactly the opposite of the intended effect. Children come away from lessons feeling like they aren't smart, they hate reading or reading just isn't for them. Those lovely visions of children basking in book-filled rooms crumple into bored, frustrated children who are more likely to act out their disengagement.

Couple that with the well-documented racial biases in discipline that teachers show against students of color, and you have a road map for the school-to-prison pipeline.

'I Just Don't Know What It Says!'

I remember a painful illustration of this dynamic in my own teaching. As I sat with one of my 5-year-old students who was struggling with a "just-right" book, encouraging him to look at the pictures, look at the first letter, guess the word, he became more and more upset with me. He looked at me tearfully, threw the book off the table and yelled, "I just don't know what it says!"

I told him to "take a break."

In the 20-plus years that Calkins' reading curriculum has been a mainstay of beginning reading instruction, I am confident this kind of exchange has taken place every school day somewhere in America.

Fortunately, Lucy Calkins' curriculum was only one component of my literacy instruction, supplemented with other resources to teach phonics and phonological awareness. However, I still look back with embarrassment about how my instructional approach may have set my students, who were predominantly English learners, on a path of lifelong difficulty with reading.

Unfortunately, most teachers are not well-informed in cognitive science research about how children learn to read. I was fortunate to have some basic training in phonics and was able to put it to work with my students to a degree. But it wasn't enough.

Many teachers who share my experience and shame about harming students are now coming forward to learn and try to do better.

But it's entirely another thing not to want to know better. It's worse yet to dig in your heels and refuse to change practice when it's clear change is needed.

Let's Drop Our Defenses and Act Humbly for Our Students

Calkins has been exceedingly slow to admit her mistakes. Only recently has she conceded that her reading curriculum lacks a solid basis in evidence, telling the New York Times, "All of us are imperfect. The last two or three years, what I've learned from the science of reading work has been transformational."

Worse, her compatriots in the educator-guru hall of fame, Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, have entirely resisted admitting the harmful impacts of their seminal work in Reading Recovery and Leveled Literary Intervention, a leading "balanced-literacy" curriculum.

This, too, is a hallmark of privilege. We've all seen the well-worn trope about the response when white women are confronted by their harms: we stew in "fragility''-defending our intentions instead of acknowledging our impact.

If we shirk our responsibility for meeting the needs of our students in favor of protecting our own egos or maintaining some halcyon image of what learning should look like, we will only see expanding gaps and continued erosion of the public school system we hold dear.

Unfortunately, educators are notoriously slow to adapt new practices to reflect emerging research or evolving cultural expectations. As public trust in teachers continues to erode and the political wars over the content of what is taught in school deepen, educators must be at the forefront of intellectual honesty, integrity, and humility.

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White Women Teachers Like Me Were 'Sold a Story' About Reading

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I still look back with embarrassment about how my instructional approach may have set my students, who were predominantly English learners, on a path of lifelong difficulty with reading. Back in 2009, as a brand-new kindergarten teacher, I faced an inevitable and impossible task.

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I sat through a LONG day of PD on Tier3 intervention yesterday &couldn’t help but think: 

Couldn’t ALL of our Ss benefit from this explicit, systematic instruction?

This infographic from @leadforliteracy must have read my mind &summarizes my thinking perfectly. #SORGood4All

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
I sat through a LONG day of PD on Tier3 intervention yesterday &couldn’t help but think: 

Couldn’t ALL of our Ss benefit from this explicit, systematic instruction?

This infographic from @leadforliteracy must have read my mind &summarizes my thinking perfectly. #SORGood4All https://t.co/O0fWLYECBz

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I sat through a LONG day of PD on Tier3 intervention yesterday &couldn’t help but think:

Couldn’t ALL of our Ss benefit from this explicit, systematic instruction?

This infographic from @leadforliteracy must have read my mind &summarizes my thinking perfectly. #SORGood4All pic.twitter.com/O0fWLYECBz
— Mme Lockhart (@MmeLockhartLDSB) December 2, 2022

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
I sat through a LONG day of PD on Tier3 intervention yesterday &couldn’t help but think: 

Couldn’t ALL of our Ss benefit from this explicit, systematic instruction?

This infographic from @leadforliteracy must have read my mind &summarizes my thinking perfectly. #SORGood4All https://t.co/O0fWLYECBz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
I sat through a LONG day of PD on Tier3 intervention yesterday &couldn’t help but think: 

Couldn’t ALL of our Ss benefit from this explicit, systematic instruction?

This infographic from @leadforliteracy must have read my mind &summarizes my thinking perfectly. #SORGood4All https://t.co/O0fWLYECBz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
I sat through a LONG day of PD on Tier3 intervention yesterday &couldn’t help but think: 

Couldn’t ALL of our Ss benefit from this explicit, systematic instruction?

This infographic from @leadforliteracy must have read my mind &summarizes my thinking perfectly. #SORGood4All